The Child Abuse Band-waggon Slips Over the Cliff….
The slur-mongers – I refuse to dignify them with the term ‘moral entrepreneurs’ – who base their business model on peddling tit-bits of salacious gossip to the post-Leveson media are coming under increased scrutiny today following the universal disquiet regarding the prime-time entertainment we were offered of police officers arriving to search the home of a man who had not even been interviewed, nor ‘invited’ to open his home, to forensic officers ‘investigating’ allegations of the most heinous crime that a man could be accused of.
James Harding, the former Murdoch editor of The Times, now head of BBC news, has instructed his journalists to ‘get big stories and break them first’ – they are in direct competition with the ‘red-tops’ in his mind. The red-tops are in the business of getting ‘big gossip’ and breaking it first…
Think about that for a minute – within living memory, people literally bet their lives on the words of the BBC; in some parts of the world, they still do. The crackling voice of BBC announcers, dinner jackets de rigueur, was heard through a thousand crystal radios providing essential ‘fact’, solidly researched, soberly delivered (Reggie Bosanquet would never have presided over ten years of the BBC news) during the war years.
Yet now we have a situation where South Yorkshire Police felt ‘pressurised’ – the polite word for blackmail – into offering the BBC inside information into a high profile criminal investigation – in order to ‘bribe’ one of their journalists into not publishing a story they felt would jeopardise a child abuse investigation.
It is very telling that the journalist left out in the Sunningdale rain to report on this ‘important’ story before the red tops, was their ‘Media and Arts’ correspondent David Sillito (gratified to see he follows Anna Raccoon) whose previous scoops include ‘Co-oP supermarket to stop selling Nuts‘ and ‘What makes a beach hut worth £500,000‘ broadcast from his home town of Scarborough – base central for so much of the darker side of the Internet’s output on child abuse carried out by top Tory politicians/anyone connected to Maggie Thatcher/have they got a famous name?
Whoever is responsible for funnelling stories into a particular channel obviously saw this as a ‘celebrity’ story rather than a crime story – they rolled out the journalist who is normally stationed at the end of the red carpet to tell us of Victoria Beckham’s latest thrilling outfit.
That just about sums up everything that is wrong with Operation Yewtree – it is celebrity and media driven.
We don’t know whether David Sillito was the journalist first tipped off that Cliff Richard was being investigated, or whether it was just passed onto him by another BBC journalist as a ‘celebrity space filler’ to titivate the six o’ clock news. We are told that the alleged victim had for 23 years felt unable to face the inside of a police station to report the alleged offence until he was sprinkled with the Mark Williams-Thomas magic dust.
Some media reports are misleading. I passed the original allegation & other info to Op.Yewtree in 2013-but nothing new since. #cliffrichard
— Mark Williams-Thomas (@mwilliamsthomas) August 17, 2014
That was a year ago. A year earlier an unsuspecting Mark Williams-Thomas was cosying up to an unsuspecting Cliff Richard at Wimbledon. Hiding in plain sight in The Shadows eh?
Stood next to Cliff Richard earlier he was very jolly – looks amazing for his age all be it a little orange #Wimbledon
— Mark Williams-Thomas (@mwilliamsthomas) July 3, 2012
Recording information as a crime to be investigated is the default position for the Police – ‘unless they hold credible evidence to the contrary’. Even when they ‘suspect’ it is nonsense, they have no choice in the matter, sans proof that it is nonsense. Blaming the Police for the current situation is a non-runner.
They must also keep the alleged ‘victim’ informed as to the progress of their investigation – appointing a liaison officer if necessary. There is nothing to stop the alleged ‘victim’ from keeping his band of supporters who first gave him ‘the courage to come forward’ informed either. Nor should there be – a genuine victim needs all the support he can get.
It can leave us with the situation where someone who sets up in business as a slur-monger peddling tit-bits to the media effectively has a hot line into the heart of criminal investigations into celebrities. It is the Max Clifford business model – but with legs on this time. Max relied on a conviction to get his story; now we have the enhanced version whereby if there is no conviction, even no arrest, you still get your celebrity story – this time dressed up as ‘police failed to act’.
That was the basis of the Meirion Jones ‘exclusive’ on his aunt’s old school, Duncroft. Mark Williams-Thomas was hired for £500 by the BBC as a ‘child protection expert’ and ‘ex-Surrey policeman’ to flesh out the truth of the ‘Savile wasn’t prosecuted for abusing those poor schoolgirls because he was too old and infirm’. He should have been the ideal person to have spotted that the letter Fiona Scott-Johnston was brandishing making this claim was a forgery carrying an out of date Surrey Police logo – but it took a Mail on Sunday reporter to know a dodgy Surrey Police logo when he saw one.
[The letter] says that Fiona was interviewed by police in 2006 despite the inquiry not beginning until May the following year.
The letter is also headed by a Surrey Police crest not in use at the time it was supposedly written. Significantly, there are no reference numbers included within the text.
A spokesman for Surrey Police said: ‘This letter is not genuine and was not sent by us at any time. The suggestion that we advised anyone this case would not be pursued due to the health of the individual concerned is wholly inaccurate.
Strange to remember that Peter Rippon felt ‘pressurised’, that polite word for blackmail again, into running that story – a pressure he stood up to – which resulted in Williams-Thomas taking the story to ITV.
Is this what the unholy trinity of Police, Media, and Celebrity has come to, post-Leveson? A support network for a new form of blackmail? We put forward an individual prepared to claim that a celebrity abused them – you either convict him or we publish a story that you failed to act? Either way, the slur mongers get their media fee.
All this is done under the emotive heading of ‘fighting child abuse’ – if you don’t agree with it, or stand up to it, you will be labelled a child abuser. Yet none of the main players are remotely interested in child abuse.
Two days ago, the specialist ‘Rainbow Centre’ at the Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool which deals exclusively in victims of child sexual abuse, put out some horrifying statistics. 125 children injured by sexual abuse in one year. In one town.
They are treating one child every three days for injuries sustained as a result of sexual abuse. In just one town.
You won’t read about it on the BBC web site – there are no expensively commissioned helicopters flying over Alder Hey. The Times isn’t running any stories about it. Nor the red-tops. Mark Williams-Thomas hasn’t even mentioned it. Meirion Jones isn’t Tweeting about it – nor is Newsnight, the former political news programme, demanding to make a programme about this scandal.
Cliff Richard denies allegations about abuse of underage boy in 1980s after police search his house #Savile
— Meirion Jones (@MeirionTweets) August 14, 2014
Not in their slur-mongering business model, see. No celebrities involved.
They may have gone too far this time. South Yorkshire Police have made a formal complaint to the Director-General of the BBC. Former Attorney General Dominic Grieve has accused the force of ‘collusion’ with the BBC. Human rights barrister Geoffrey Robertson QC wrote a coruscating article branding the situation ‘unacceptable’.
The goodwill of the public has been exasperated by a charade which has succeeded in diverting funds from helping genuine child victims.
The slur-mongers have become the celebrities – I fear they won’t enjoy their time in the spotlight.
- Helen
August 18, 2014 at 10:06 am -
Liverpool may just be a snapshot of the very real and tangible abuse of children going on throughout the UK today. Do we know whether the NSPCC is directly involved in supporting the front line staff who are dealing with these numbers? Or is it, I suspect, being dealt with by already overstretched Social Workers?
- Alexander Baron
August 18, 2014 at 10:19 am -
Just in case you haven’t seen it:
The so-called Truth Movement has wisened up to this crank now; some good stuff here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSSDqOSIJww - Ho Hum
August 18, 2014 at 10:22 am -
If these people were really interested in serving the interests of justice, you would think that they’d rebuke those amongst their groupies who peddle some of the more virulently vilifying innuendo and other scurrilous material being cast at those who are still, within the eyes of the law that they purport to be supporting, innocent. But there doesn’t seem to be much evidence of their doing so with any particular frequency or enthusiasm. So it possibly isn’t unreasonable to see them as somewhat akin to the paid ‘pinprickers’ that supported Matthew Hopkins and such like, in the days when it was made sure that those who were considered definitely guilty before trial, got what was coming to them by hook or by crook
- Andrew Rosthorn
August 18, 2014 at 10:28 am -
No problem with your salient facts Anna, but Reggie Bosanquet was an ITN reporter, then later a celebrated ITN news reader. He was only 13 when the war ended. You were probably thinking of Alvar Lidell. Keep up the good work.
- Joe Public
August 18, 2014 at 10:29 am -
“All this is done under the emotive heading of ‘fighting child abuse’ – if you don’t agree with it, or stand up to it, you will be labelled a child abuser. ”
That sentence succinctly sums up the sad situation.
- Gil
August 18, 2014 at 10:45 am -
Why does this article conjure up images of axes being hurled and hitting the target? Viking ancestry?
“…sprinkled with the Mark Williams-Thomas magic dust…”
What a fantastic image. Wonder what the ingredients are, if that isn’t a secret. - Jim
August 18, 2014 at 10:48 am -
Yet again we depend on blogs like Anna Raccoon’s to uncover how our freedoms are being abused. Everything this country has fought for over the centuries – freedom of thought, freedom of expression, freedom of innocence until proven guilty, freedom of being treated with respect, freedom of information, freedom from slander and lies, freedom from harassment….the list goes on……it is all being ravaged and mutilated by a media system wholly concerned with attracting viewing stats based on the lowest common denominator.
When we see Jeremy Kyle as DG of the BBC we probably still won’t do anything about it.
But at least we can do something together by voicing our protest about the way Cliff Richard has been dealt with. We can choose whether to switch on our TV, but soon we won’t be able to have any control over the way the police behave or act if and when any of us faces any allegation over anything. Today it might be Child abuse. Tomorrow it could simply be whether you were walking down the street in a “dangerous” manner.
- Chris
August 18, 2014 at 12:11 pm -
Well said, Jim.
My own ‘television’ now is limited to mostly odd bits of BBC4 – archive shows from ‘before the meltdown’, history programmes presented by the Last of the Attractive Intelligent Women – that sort of thing, plus the odd bit of television made by people not completely compromised (Charlie Brooker, for instance). I just aren’t interested in the mainstream anymore, it’s all been completely polluted. Parky’s demeanour in that short interview yesterday spoke volumes – he knows he himself is standing in a minefield, and that there is nothing he can do about it. The elderly celebrities of the last century are this century’s witches.
My own prediction is Boris will replace Cameron as Plastic PM, and Labour will respond by replacing Ed-the-ball with illiterate reality TV “nice guy” Joey Essex – a sure fire vote-winner for the young people they are training like chimps to ‘save democracy’
- Chris
- GildasTheMonk
August 18, 2014 at 11:39 am -
A very good piece by Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times yesterday on the raiding of Sir Cliff Richard’s home. Liddle is a bloke I feel I want to dislike a lot, but often talks a lot of sense. As he observed, the police seem to have moved from a mindset in which “Slebrities” are all immune from prosecution to one in which the aforementioned “Slebrities” are to be assumed guilty, and as much as possible publicity gained in the process.
And as Liddle and others (including the forthright Sigillum on this site) have said: What on earth was the point of a raid by the police? After something like 30 years since the alleged incident, what are they looking for in a house 200 miles away from the alleged scene.
This is just an exercise in grandstanding. And now we have the inevitable band wagon of allegations.
Even if – which I doubt – some D list “Celeb” groped someone in 1983 and nothing was done about because you could not be bothered to complain, then get over it. This whole witch hunt has become a self serving industry which I find distasteful and worrying. I do not trust the police to exercise good judgment.- Pericles
August 18, 2014 at 8:52 pm -
I have little sympathy with ‘celebrities’ — even less with those that adulate them — but believe passionately in fairness, something that ought to be accorded as much to celebrities as to any-one else.
As Robertson says, the weakness of the investigatory process lies in the fact that justices of the peace are unqualified. The very least requirement ought to be that a justice be attended by a qualified clerk of the court when issuing a warrant; better still, as again noted by Robertson, that warrants be issued by full recorders or judges.
I share with Gildas a finding really odd — in a police operation that seems to define oddity — that this search took place more than a quarter-century after the supposed event: a sexual assault. What on Earth did the police expect to find? (Robertson himself, by use of question mark, implies the same incredulity.)
I fear, however, that, what ever Anna says, the public is not exasperated by this charade. The public is prurient and likes nothing more than the whiff of scandal involving any-one slightly out of the ordinary: handicapped, homosexual, red-haired, even — as in Sir Cliff’s case — a mere bachelor.
(I know nothing of Sir Cliff’s sexual proclivities; nor are they any of my business; but I do know that many have inferred from his marital status — or lack of it — something ‘unusual’. At one time it was thought that, with their shared love of tennis, he might get together with Sue of Chiddingfold … but she married a policeman.)
ΠΞ
P.S. Thank you, Gildas, for spelling ‘judgment’ correctly.
- Pericles
- Gil
August 18, 2014 at 12:04 pm -
The Savile allegations are being revived:
https://twitter.com/mwilliamsthomas/status/501112340386164736Several tweets about on it on the CI channel’s twitter page, sandwiching one on August 15 about CR.
- Chris
August 18, 2014 at 12:29 pm -
Should we judge a man by the quality of his supporters?
Yes, I think we should.
https://twitter.com/mwilliamsthomas/status/501288300762923008 - GD
August 18, 2014 at 12:31 pm -
He really is a disgusting little man…
“Five Brave women” were posting that stuff all over “Friends Reunited” since at least 2007, so it can’t have taken that much courage!
- Chris
- English Pensioner
August 18, 2014 at 12:20 pm -
I simply wonder what the police would expect to find in a possible offender’s home all these years after the alleged event. Was it even Cliff’s home at the time? Surely there can’t be forensic evidence after all these years.
One can only presume that they were looking for evidence of more recent activities which might, by implication “prove” earlier allegations were probably true. I think the police are going for celebrities in this way in order that they can say “Look, no one is immune from our investigations” whilst ignoring those who genuinely need investigating.- Ian B
August 18, 2014 at 12:27 pm -
They’re looking for evidence that he’s a “paedo”, not of the particular crime. Ideally, some porn that may or may not be underage, if not a a notebook labelled “My Paedo Diary Of My Paedo Career In The Great Paedo Years By Cliff Paedo Richard”. If not that, at least evidence that he’s a Homo, to drag out in court.
- Duncan Disorderly
August 18, 2014 at 12:41 pm -
I saw Cliff’s autobiography at a charity book sale at the weekend. I think it was called ‘My Life, My Way’. I suppose his publisher thought it would be more marketable than ‘My Paedo Diary Of My Paedo Career In The Great Paedo Years’.
- Chris
August 18, 2014 at 12:46 pm -
I’m quite certain that even if he does have the odd Tommy Tank, being well aware of the changing of the guard in the Yew-K over the past couple of years would mean the one-time Harry Webb will have nothing incriminating in his abode anyway.
But of course if the filth turn up to somebody’s house when they aren’t there who knows what could ‘turn up’? There’s one particular ‘witch’ on trial soon who had the police turn his place over twice – and eventually they found something. He says he’d never seen what they found before, but there yew go – will the jury believe a witch or will they believe earnest police officers? And there but for fortune goes everyone, including women.- ivan
August 18, 2014 at 1:39 pm -
Chris, you are saying exactly what I said on the previous thread about ‘things turning up’ since there was no person there to watch what was going on.
- Mr Ecks
August 18, 2014 at 1:52 pm -
But “Frankie” says there will be a police camera watching the search–so there is no need to worry about anything being planted.
Is there?……
- Mr Ecks
- Gil
August 18, 2014 at 2:07 pm -
Who wouldn’t want the chance to root through a celeb’s drawers? A tennis racket? Toss. Photo with Cilla? Toss. Photo with Jill? Toss. Five tennis balls? Toss. Delia Smith cookbook? Toss. Another tennis racket? Toss. Evangelical CD with squeaky-voiced singer. Hmm… CofE hymnary… hey what’s this “Abba, Father, let me be”, “Child in the mangler”… Bingo!
- ivan
- Duncan Disorderly
- Ian B
- corevalue
August 18, 2014 at 12:26 pm -
Just a minute – this doesn’t stack up. If this number of children were being treated for injuries after rape, then one must assume that forceful rape occurred with an easily identifiable perpetrator and that prosecutions would be easy and an almost trivial exercise; and there would be huge numbers if this was typical of other provincial towns. But down in the article it says:
“Victims can be referred to us by the police, in which case we help gather evidence in case there is a prosecution in the future.
“But sometimes we get people who just want medical treatment after being raped but don’t necessarily want to involve the police, in which case we respect that view.”
So the numbers are “victims” alleged to have been raped (or even looking for emergency contraception?) This of course includes perfectly consensual sex between minors, not necessarily those with actual physical injuries. I know of one poor woman who back in the late 60’s found herself in such a place – caught at school doing the dirty with her boyfriend. She was hauled off for assessment of her “injuries” (none), her boyfriend was off to borstal. The “therapy” she was forced to receive was far more damaging than the underage sex, every time she wanted to become intimate with some one, she would lock up and burst into tears, this in her twenties.
- Ian B
August 18, 2014 at 12:33 pm -
Indeed. From the article,
“Most victims are in the 14 to 25 age bracket”
I fear Anna has inadvertently peddled something rather misleading. Rather than an endless parade of buggered infants (which the presentation implies) we appear to have mostly teenagers under 16 who may or may not have actually suffered a physical injury (and mostly from the description appear not to have suffered any) and may or may not have been actually raped, even if (in American terminology) they’ve been statutorily raped.
- GD
August 18, 2014 at 12:33 pm -
Curiously, before all this, if you had posted:
“She was hauled off for assessment of her “injuries” (none), her boyfriend was off to borstal. The “therapy” she was forced to receive was far more damaging than the underage sex, every time she wanted to become intimate with some one, she would lock up and burst into tears, this in her twenties.”The very first thing I would have asked you was whether the place she was sent was called Duncroft…
- Ian B
- IlovetheBBC
August 18, 2014 at 12:28 pm -
I wish to apply to the landlady to change my name
- The Slog
August 18, 2014 at 1:05 pm -
Mr Mark Williams-Thomas likes to give the oxygen of publicity a burst here and there. By his own acts and statements be it also known that he is almost certainly a moron. Thus his self-appointed title, Child Abuse Evangelist (CHAV), is an oxymoron. Entirely predictable in my view. Note how quiet Marky-Mark goes when wronged celebs call him out:
https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2014/08/11/the-paedofile-the-strange-silence-of-mark-williams-thomason-the-subject-of-jim-davidsons-innocence/- GD
August 18, 2014 at 3:30 pm -
One significant possibility is being overlooked by that blog…
The one where MWT is exaggerating the extent of his contact and influence with Yewtree to big himself up and was LYING about knowing anything about Jim Davison’s file at all.
The officers on Yewtree are of a different generation and (I think?) higher rank than MWT and nailed rigidly to protocol…WHY ON EARTH would they be casually chatting with him about anything?
Think about it…
- tdf
August 19, 2014 at 3:03 am
- GD
- falsely accused
August 18, 2014 at 1:45 pm - Alexander Baron
August 18, 2014 at 2:21 pm -
By the way, isn’t there only one G in bandwagon, or am I missing a pun or something?
- Pericles
August 18, 2014 at 8:58 pm -
Ah, pedantry: so much more fun that sexual abuse. Although, having never tried the latter, I might not be best qualified in the matter.
ΠΞ
- Rightwinggit
August 19, 2014 at 3:57 pm -
“Still none of you sharp eyed pedants noticed that I wrote ferment instead of foment yesterday,..”
Wanna bet?
- Rightwinggit
- Pericles
- Gil
August 18, 2014 at 2:23 pm -
30 June “… I can tell you … following on from today’s conviction … there are a number of very high-profile individuals, and they will now feel the full weight of the police…”
http://www.channel4.com/news/rolf-harris-victim-tonya-lee-australia-greenwich- Chris
August 18, 2014 at 2:39 pm -
Right from the off – as the archive of this blog testifies – there was no deviation from the path set by the Exposure on Jimmy Savile, and the ‘here’s a gagging order we prepared earlier’ contrived Operation Yewtree. Those involved had an agenda, and stuck to it. No questions, no analysis, no proper interviews. Ask a question, get blocked. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ive-been-blocked-by-Mark-Williams-Thomas/522810787785441?fref=ts
Give yourself ‘a voice’ and if it doesn’t chime in with the Witchfinders, find yourself in the dock.- GD
August 18, 2014 at 3:00 pm -
I don’t think I qualify…MWT has blocked me AT LEAST twice.
I often lie awake as night, unable to sleep, wondering what kind of terrible person I must be that he unblocked me in between.
- Chris
August 18, 2014 at 3:02 pm -
I have just remembered why I was blocked in 2012
https://twitter.com/mwilliamsthomas/status/285028573578940416- GD
August 18, 2014 at 4:54 pm -
I guess MWT is too young to have ever heard of Sable Starr et al?
(What am I saying? If he blocked you for THAT he is coming across as about 5 years old)
- Chris
August 18, 2014 at 5:02 pm -
He ain’t interested in Sable Starr, nor is he interested in rock stars, dead or alive, who make $$$$$ every year for the likes of Universal.
I’m prepared to eat my words, but I will be surprised if we see any ‘brand’ rock stars dragged into the mellee – when we all know what they did.
- Chris
- GD
- Chris
- GD
- Chris
- Chris
August 18, 2014 at 4:18 pm -
I’ve just been pointed to this video – and if you think you’ve heard it all, get a load of this idiot.
“Dear Sir Cliff Richard”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wlp_mFfPrwc&feature=youtu.be- GD
August 18, 2014 at 7:18 pm -
I think she should be given her own TV series…on BBC1
- GD
- Tapestry
August 18, 2014 at 4:50 pm - Carol42
August 18, 2014 at 5:02 pm -
I think they might just have gone too far with this one. Everyone I have spoke too, even those who believed the Savile allegations just don’t believe it this time and are starting to doubt all the stories now so there is hope. I find the idea of Cliff Richards abusing anyone slightly ridiculous, even as a teenager of his generation I found him curiously asexual if anything.
- EyesWideShut
August 18, 2014 at 5:51 pm -
On would hope so, Carol42. I’ve detected a more circumspect tone in the coverage of CR both by the broadsheets and the tabloids, and a greater willingness to criticise the media circus around the Sunningdale search. However, it’s early days yet. My fear is that even if the investigation is dropped, the response of the apologists for the witch-hunt will be that this actually shows the system works: we don’t prosecute in cases where there is insufficient evidence. CR, as a good Christian, should of course understand that the Holy Office of the Inquisition is motivated only by the desire to save souls, and therefore even if they are wrong, they are right. The utterly brainwashed will continue to believe that CR as a Lizard in high standing with the Lizard community has been protected by the vast international lizard conspiracy, presumably because he has the goods on some other lizards.
Meirion Jones (sp?) seems to have “convinced” himself that JS, for example, was the “open sesame” to a huge political scandal. I think for him Savile would be a minor scalp. His fantasies revolve around a sort of “All The Prime Minister’s Paeds” style expose.
- EyesWideShut
- Tapestry
August 18, 2014 at 6:34 pm -
40 MPs now being investigated by paedopolice. PRESSTV.
http://the-tap.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/boris-is-he-one-of-us-or-one-of-them.html - sally stevens
August 18, 2014 at 6:47 pm -
Nobody died at Duncroft. A heroin addict died after absconding from an overdose. That happens. Wouldn’t have happened at the school itself. That’s all, folks. GD was not a fan of the place, I certainly didn’t love it to death, but my attitude was ‘get it over with and get back to your life.’ I have no axe to grind with Margaret Jones, or any of the staff in hindsight. I got out of Duncroft. They didn’t. And they had to work with the likes of – well, you know them all too well by now.
I may have been the only former resident/pupil/inmate/whatever who actually picked up a phone and spoke with MWT at the time all this started. I told him, flat out, he was being lied to, among other subjects we covered. That didn’t seem to trouble him one bit. He was off on his crusade for coverage, and boy did he succeed. But now, as the old saying has it, pride cometh before a … and over the cliff he goes.
- GD
August 18, 2014 at 7:24 pm -
Just in case anyone is interested SS does not know me or anything about me, has never corresponded with me, and, as a result, DEFINITELY does not speak for me on this or any other topic. Now or ever…
:o)
- sally stevens
August 18, 2014 at 7:45 pm -
Yes, I do know you. Don’t be silly.
- sally stevens
- GD
- sally stevens
August 18, 2014 at 7:51 pm -
The issue of the death was discussed at great length on the Careleavers message board. Those who were there at the time were in agreement that this unfortunate girl did die, but as Anna already noted, and I agree, that this took place while the girl was either on home leave, or had absconded. A couple of the women on Careleavers knew who she was, one was a close friend, and that it did happen when she was on the run, and one at least remarked that Margaret Jones was pretty cynical about what had happened, which they found hurtful. I think they later had a memorial service for her at St. Mary’s, the church that girls/staff from Duncroft usually attended. Margaret Jones further confirmed that nobody had ever died at Duncroft.
- GD
August 18, 2014 at 8:16 pm -
GOOD GRIEF!!! Just emailing with someone and my attention was drawn to this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/southern_counties/2963918.stmHow on EARTH does he have any credibility at all?
Maybe it is a coincidence, but the “Exposure” the week before the JS nonsense broke was “fly on the wall” “exposure” of shady practices in Funeral Directors (I could not make this up!)
- GD
August 18, 2014 at 8:24 pm -
Yes, I was right about the Undertakers “Exposure” in 2012, coincidence or what?
http://www.itv.com/news/2012-09-26/itv-investigation-uncovers-disrespect-exploitation-and-racism-in-funeral-business/- Chris
August 18, 2014 at 8:37 pm -
So many coincidences, so little time….
What I would like to know is who the hell is backing this illiterate snake? How does he go from failed policeman to Paedofinder General – how, for instance, after leaving under a cloud did he appear on Jon Ronson’s C4 documentary on Jonathan King as ‘Surrey Police’?- GD
August 18, 2014 at 9:28 pm -
I think, in that instance, “without mandate from Surrey Police” could be a given?
I was told he never went beyond humble beat plod…I am not sure how true that is of course…perhaps someone,who is not blocked (and would like to be – before anyone finds out and ostracises them) could tweet him and ask?
- sally stevens
August 18, 2014 at 9:37 pm -
Anna long ago filed an FOI Request which has been staunchly ignored. You can’t get any info on this cockroach. Let alone if you asked him – I’m not blocked, for some odd reason, because he knows I’m no fan – but he wouldn’t tell you, why should he?
- Ho Hum
August 18, 2014 at 11:48 pm -
I’m not sure what was requested but did she ask if there was any Compromise Agreement in place? If there were, you probably couldn’t expect them to provide answers. Maybe Anna should ask if there is?
- Ho Hum
- sally stevens
- GD
- Chris
- GD
- sally stevens
August 18, 2014 at 8:59 pm -
Mr. Williams-Thomas is without doubt the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on the people of the United Kingdom via the MSM. I hope this wakes them up at last. I’m pretty sure that the Cliff situation has been resurrected because the Savile Trust litigation is now on appeal, which means no moolah for moochers or moochers despicable counsel until that appeal is heard. Now, here comes Deep Pockets No. whatever it is, and by crikey, same methods to trawl for ‘victims’ is being used, i.e. get the MSM out there to document everything from get-go, and then see if other moochers come slithering along, like Night of the Living Dead. But, unlike Jimmy Savile, Cliff is alive and can quite adequately defend himself against predatory scum-buckets like Dux. I just wonder what the Billy Graham Ministries are thinking about having their good name dragged in the mud as well, as if somehow Billy Graham was associating with known child-abusers. I imagine at some point we may hear from Billy’s son, Franklin, who now runs the Ministries, though his father is still living.
- Carl
August 18, 2014 at 9:14 pm -
https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/david-cameron-full-public-enquiry-into-the-actions-of-south-yorkshire-police-and-bbc?recruiter=76807804
Anna. The link above is to a petition calling for an enquiry into the BBC and SY Police’s conduct in this matter. I don’t know if it can have any effect but thought it worth signing, perhaps some other contributors to your blog might wish to do the same.
Also just heard on news that SY Police Commissioner is demanding answers and Keith Vaz has said he wants a reply to his queries by Friday.
Do you think that the dramatic deterioration in BBC news standards in recent 12 months, has anything to do with an ex red top editor now being head of BBC news?- GD
August 18, 2014 at 9:40 pm -
Signed, for what good it will do…and it would be signed WHOEVER the victim of this travesty had been. We have laws and procedures for a *GOOD* reason.
- EyesWideShut
August 18, 2014 at 9:57 pm -
Signed. There is an optional box where they ask what is your reason for signing this, so I just wrote “Due process. No trial by media”.
I am still entirely unsatisfied as to which of the grounds under s 8(1) PACE 84 were satisfied for the issue of the search warrant in the first place. However having followed the Redknapp case, where warrants were issued without having cited one or any of the four conditions at all, and the court determined that this was just a lickle oversight, I am not overly optimistic that much attention will be paid to this.
There is a story about the great Karl Krause (“The Last Days of Mankind”) patiently resetting type in his magazine as Vienna tottered in 1918. He was trying to insert a missing comma. His assistants begged him to forget about it and save himself. Revolution and war raged all around them. He replied “If we had paid more attention to missing commas, we would not now be in the state we are in.”
- GD
August 18, 2014 at 10:13 pm -
In the bigger picture, everything about the UK creeps closer to being a police state with every day that passes anyway. This pushed more than one envelope, and way too far for my liking.
- EyesWideShut
August 18, 2014 at 10:25 pm -
GD, I’ve been under the impression for a very long time that much of what we are told is done for our own good is done for the purposes of social control. Take CCTV: we are surveilled to an extent that the old GDR could only dream of, and all without any need to recruit human intel at all. There is no evidence it makes any of us personally safer and a great deal that it enriches the usual suspects.
Now why is that? I think we are truly in the meat-grinder: a combination of corporate and political interests which have their own agenda. It might not even be the same one, but as the then Pope famously said of Italian fascism in the Lateran Accords “it is compatible.”
I grew up with the notion that what we did not then call the MSM was economical with the actualite, and that it served the interests of the dominant power structure (certainly in NI), but the sheer bare-faced lying which goes on nowadays is a new one to me. I regard it as an indication of panic as much as anything else: they are losing the plot. Believe it or not, the old confidence is draining out of them, hence the frantic spinning and distraction.
- GD
August 18, 2014 at 10:41 pm -
After all, the UK, like Japan, geographically limited and, at least to an extent, isolated, as an island has developed a “control culture” over hundreds of years (Switzerland has artificially generated a similar status).
Whenever I look at the reality of the UK these days I tend to see something akin to the most chilling Dr Who plot ever. There is NO PRIVACY.
(I just realised I had better google “MSM” for a meaning before commenting further on it unless I wanted to take a world beating pratfall…just goes to show how little interacting I really do…still, I can’t see what was wrong with the 5th estate…I knew what that meant.)
I had a road to Damascus when I moved to Ireland from the UK during the Falklands War…the Irish press used to try and serve up a few ould facts you see, and you only had to get used to that and even the tub bashing and b*llsh*t on Radio Luxembourg would set your teeth on edge…
But these days…even in Ireland the “meeja” is a symphony composed by Joseph Goebbels. Truth and the facts seem to have no value. Whichever way I turn, Ireland of the UK some coarse and avaricious little tart is being carried shoulder high as a “brave survivor” in the wake of a Tsunami of her own lies…and these are only the minor details, the “big picture” in the UK is terrifying.
- EyesWideShut
August 18, 2014 at 11:06 pm -
GD, I’ve read your blog by the simple expedient of clicking on your name It is absolutely stunning. I see you jacked it in, and I don’t blame you, but what a find. I have a handful of blogs I read and comment on simply to address the subject of lying, but that is a mere critical reflex and therefore parasitic. Your blog is the real deal.
If I had to draw a broad brush, I would say Ireland by virtue of its history and its tiny population has one advantage over the UK: we don’t expect truth. You can see the lie-merchants close up and personal, so you quickly lose all sense of reverence for them.
GB no the other hand is a very major player in the world: take the City of London. The money that is parked there would make your eyes bleed. They are operating at a global level that makes Ireland hobbitsville. The Irish economy is so globalised and so indebted and so thoroughly unable to do anything about it, that there is no comparison. The country is what it has always been: a hypo-colony. Nothing can be expected of the political classes. As for the media, it is a poor copy of the transatlantic (US and UK) but even more frivolous because the culture wars they re-enact have no real roots in Irish experience or relevance to Irish people. “Imitation of life”.
- GD
August 18, 2014 at 11:54 pm -
I had to pull out of the sex work issue…there is little or nothing left to be achieved now, whatever happens is a foregone conclusion. It’s a bit like that part of the X factor where everybody holds hands and tries not to freak out while they wait to see who is gone. There is not point in singing now. It is an issue where one side is, broadly, right, and the other, broadly wrong, but, in fact, neither side is any true ally of my own. It was a relief not to be under fire from both sides any more. :o)
The “Mythbuster” idea came from the enemy hypocrite in chief who announced that, in the next few days she would be doing some mythbusting….so, in a true spirit of reconciliation I thought:
“How nice, that sounds like a game we can ALL play”…for some reason she never did get round to any mythbusting of her own…never mind…some other time?
Don’t underestimate Ireland, I suspect (if anyone could work out where the other 75% has been stashed), it would be one of the wealthiest per capita nations in the world which still adds up to a flea bite of a total I know. Ireland has no actual power (except through a hidden international network of mammies who control just about everyone!) but it has a seriously disproportionate level of influence on things like opinion making in social policy. If Ireland bans the purchase of sexual services it will have nearly the same weight in terms of European opinion as if the UK did.
- EyesWideShut
August 19, 2014 at 12:19 am -
GD, your blog was fascinating not just because of the issues it was addressing, but the manner in which it did so. It reminded me of the supreme importance of the individual voice. This is a value which has been steadily eroded over the last quarter of century. As a reader, I don’t have to agree with you, I don’t have to “gawd-help-us” empathise with you, (how patronising )what I have to do is pay attention, and I did. “Attention must be paid”, in the great final words of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman”.
I would say, you should go back to it – just write. Not for social justice purposes or to contribute to a campaign. You would have one reader, at least.
- GD
August 19, 2014 at 12:32 am -
…ah thank you…I am of the opinion (confirmed by others) that my personal communication style tends to be sorta:
“Here is all I can remember of what I know – see if you can make anything of it”
Trouble with me is that, when I am not interfering shamelessly in national and international politics I am apt to get the whole head too wrapped up in practical minutiae of no interest to anyone to actually pay any attention to the world in general…
- EyesWideShut
August 19, 2014 at 1:15 am -
The best kind of writing.
“This is what I know. Now, over to you.”
The world is full of people who are intent on telling us what we should know when they know sweet Francesca Arkwright about anything at all.
Night-night and keep telling like it was or is.
- EyesWideShut
- GD
- EyesWideShut
- GD
- EyesWideShut
- GD
- EyesWideShut
- GD
- GD
- sally stevens
August 18, 2014 at 10:01 pm -
“Enough of this disgraceful collusion between the ‘press’ and the authorities. Time to expose those who are only in it for self-glorification and money, while real child abusers continue to get away with it.”
Signed.
- Ho Hum
August 19, 2014 at 2:17 am -
This report names which BBC reporter allegedly obtained the scoop
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/aug/18/bbc-cliff-richard-raid-coverage-south-yorkshire
- Gil
August 19, 2014 at 1:47 pm -
- Ho Hum
August 19, 2014 at 2:03 pm -
Sheesh! I thought there were enough people spreading pernicious nonsense on Twitter and the like without the police joining in too.
Does anyone currently offer training sessions as to how to be particularly good at that? If not, there must be a great untapped market out there, so can’t be long in coming…
- Chris
August 19, 2014 at 4:11 pm -
Actually that “Twitter is the tool of the devil” is not far off the mark.
All the wankers doing the most damage are using Twitter to aid their mission – and in my opinion are all being ‘schooled’ in how to do it, hence the generic insincerity dripping from the stuff in between the crusading Tweets – the “well done to blah blah” sports tweets, the “I don’t listen to music at all but I’m going to say blah blah is really talented and ‘a fine role model’” tweet and the ‘R.I.P. person I’ve barely heard of’ tweet. The “spokesperson for society” schtick they all have is utterly preposterous – but they are practically interchangable with each other.
Singing from the same hymn sheet, indeed. And reading the same scripts.- Ho Hum
August 19, 2014 at 7:01 pm -
And, lo and behold, it came to pass….
https://twitter.com/mwilliamsthomas/status/501731636426604544
‘Keith Vaz MP takes on this role that almost everyone should answer to him & his ‘Commitee’.’
Is that supposed to be as opposed to him and his mob?
- Ho Hum
August 19, 2014 at 7:04 pm -
- Gil
August 19, 2014 at 11:22 pm -
I wouldn’t be surprised if Twitter serves not just to spread rumour but literally to brainwash people through suggestion, or at the very least implant ideas that some may consciously exploit. Tweet [big name] plus hashtags like #Savile and #sexual offences. Wait several months. Should the result be any surprise?
- Gil
- Ho Hum
- Ho Hum
- Chris
- Ho Hum
- Ho Hum
August 19, 2014 at 7:19 pm -
So the Beeb’s journalists have to ‘get big stories and break them first’?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-28838563
It used to be that the only thing the BBC and the Mail had in common was a Red Top. Now, it seems, the race to the bottom of the sewer is well and truly on.
Read, and weep.
- True story
November 25, 2014 at 2:35 am -
MWT just uses child abuse and victims of abuse and witnesses to make money and get media attention. I was involved in a high profile case and he kept harassing me constantly calling and emailing upsetting me but I refused to confirm or talk about the absolute bull crap story he wanted to sell. He did sell the story and put my name in it but it was all lies . i complained to press complaints and emailed detectives on case about “evidence” he sold to press instead of passing on, the reply was not a very nice one about MWT, police don’t like him at all
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