Ooh, that Richard Littlejohn is a terrible man, and the Daily Mail, dreadful paper! Why just three months ago, he was demanding that young children be protected from the full onslaught of adult sexuality, as they were ‘too young to deal with it’.

“The school shouldn’t be allowed to elevate its ‘commitment to diversity and equality’ above its duty of care to its pupils and their parents.

It should be protecting pupils from some of the more, er, challenging realities of adult life, not forcing them down their throats.

These are primary school children, for heaven’s sake. Most them still believe in Father Christmas. Let them enjoy their childhood. They will lose their innocence soon enough.”

What hateful sentiments, how dare he seek to protect young children! 3 months, almost to the day, later, it was being claimed that Richard Littlejohn, in the course of his earlier article, had ‘outed’ Lucy Meadows as ‘trangendered’ and thus ‘monstered her’. There is an on-line petition at ‘SumofUs’ which fights for ‘people over profits’ to fire him from his job, which has now collected near a quarter of a million signatures designed to hound Littlejohn from his job.

For suggesting that the school that employed Lucy Meadows should put the mental welfare of its young children ahead of its duty to diversity and equality? Surely not. I forgot, he also made the terrible error of referring to Lucy as ‘he’.

As it happens, Littlejohn didn’t ‘out Lucy Meadows’. The school did that in a letter to all its parents blandly stating that:

A primary school has written to parents to explain that a male teacher will be returning after Christmas as a woman.

St Mary Magdalen’s School in Accrington have asked pupils to address Nathan Upton as Miss Meadows from the start of the Spring term.

Karen Hardman, the headteacher at the Church of England school, said Mr Upton, who will also be dressing as a woman, has her full support.

Mr Upton has asked for his privacy to be respected, saying it had not been an easy decision to make.

Looks as though the school is also referring to Lucy Meadows as he too, without any campaign to sack the journalist responsible or the head teacher concerned? The day after that article was published, Richard Littlejohn wrote his piece suggesting that perhaps the teacher concerned (and the school, in my opinion) might serve seven year olds better by not asking them to confront full-on the confusing aspects of trangenderisim. At no point in the article did he condemn those who feel the need to reorientate their sexuality – he merely felt that asking seven-year olds to cope with Mr Upton becoming Miss Meadows ‘overnight’ in their eyes was asking too much.

“Why should they be forced to deal with the news that a male teacher they have always known as Mr Upton will henceforth be a woman called Miss Meadows?”

“Nathan Upton is entitled to his gender reassignment surgery, but he isn’t entitled to project his personal problems on to impressionable young children.

By insisting on returning to St Mary Magdalen’s, he is putting his own selfish needs ahead of the well-being of the children he has taught for the past few years.

It would have been easy for him to disappear quietly at Christmas, have the operation and then return to work as ‘Miss Meadows’ at another school on the other side of town in September. No-one would have been any the wiser.

But if he cares so little for the sensibilities of the children he is paid to teach, he’s not only trapped in the wrong body, he’s in the wrong job.”

This was akin to stealing an egg from a broody hen to the trangendered community, who puffed up their feathers and screeched with one voice ‘we’re being monstered, victimised, we’re vulnerable’ and the rest of the lexicon from the approved book of ‘Outraged Community’.

Three months after this article, sadly Lucy Meadows decided to take her own life. It appears it was not the first time she had made this decision, just the first time she had been successful.  Last Wednesday the inquest opened with the Coroner saying:

I understand there have been previous attempts to commit suicide. I don’t know if they are relevant or not.

There are shades of Jacintha Saldana here, the nurse whose suicide was popularly believed to have been as a result of ‘hounding’ by pranksters who had asked her to put a call through to another nurse…she also was found to have made previous suicide attempts, but not before her death was used by those left leaning celebrities who would like to see the death of every right wing newspaper…

As it happens, the Daily Mail has been remarkably consistent in its support of transgenderism, possibly as a result of one of Richard Littlejohn’s past Daily Mail colleagues, ‘John Ozimek’, having successfully made the transition to ‘Jane Fae’ resulting in several sympathetic articles appearing in the Daily Mail. I count Jane Fae as a friend of mine, and I am in awe of the manner in which he has managed to hold together his extended family during spectacularly difficult and traumatic times. I know from my many conversations with Jane just what a fraught and frightening journey it is to make. I also know that it is not all that goes on in a person’s life.

Though it might surprise some of the more vocal activists, people undergoing treatment for transsexuality, also have difficulty paying their gas bill, rows with their ex-mother-in-law, partners that develop cancer, investments that suddenly lose money, disappointment in crucial exams, mental health problems, in fact the full panoply of traumas that afflict the rest of us.

There might be an argument that runs along the lines of ‘those who have made two previous suicide attacks should have that fact tattooed on their forehead’ so that everyone would know not to involve them in practical jokes, or dare to refer to them as ‘he’ when they are still legally ‘he’ and even their own school refers to them as ‘he’ – for fear that they will find themselves hounded out of a job by a baying crowd.

For when it comes to ‘hounding’ – what do the 250,000 who wish to hound Littlejohn out of a job know about his mental health? What did the thousands who wished to hound Jan Muir out of a job know about her mental health? Should, God forbid, Litteljohn suddenly be discovered swinging high in the cherry tree, what would be their defence for having ‘hounded’ him – Oh! He called Lucy ‘he’; he deserved to die?

Apparently hounding, true hounding, where thousands of outraged twitter moral activists describe someone as ‘vile and hateful’ and demand that they lose their employment is perfectly acceptable, where correctly reporting the comments of parents at a school who are concerned for the well being of their child is not.

Is it any accident that both Jan Muir and Richard Littlejohn work for the Daily Mail, the most successful on-line right wing newspaper? Is it any accident that the petition is raised by an organisation that declares itself ‘for people not profits’, a left wing campaigning organisation.

Do any of these shrill activists actually care about Jacintha Saldana’s family now she has ceased to be a stick to berate the right wing press. Do any care about Lucy Meadow’s family? Possibly about as much as they care for the well being of the original Duncroft girls now that they have had their fun whacking the BBC over the head with the Savile story.

It is a spectacularly ugly politics that is being played out in the media right now; no credit to the United Kingdom at all.

The picture editors were busy yesterday. The winsome portrayals of Madeleine McCann, once the picture of choice if the word paedophilia was to be mentioned in the media, were passed over. The aging shots of Jimmy Savile dusted down again, a touch of yellow applied to the teeth; the one with the sinister leer selected, the fattest cigar, symbol of wealth and membership of an elite, brought to the fore, and extra space booked on the front page to allow a larger than usual graphic to be displayed.

Had something occurred which involved Savile? Not exactly. But a man who had once freelanced for the same employer as Savile had been charged with a sexual offence which had come to the fore of the mind of someone, now middle aged, given the ‘courage’ to come forward 30 years later in the wake of the allegations that the BBC  might conceivably be financially responsible for all crimes of a sexual nature which occurred within spitting distance of their premises by anyone with a tenuous claim to employment by them.

A BBC correspondent said Smith was a chauffeur who drove for the BBC though it was not clear his alleged offences occurred while he was employed by the corporation.

Yeah! ‘Yewtree’ has notched up its first formal charges! Considering that Yewtree received more than 500 ‘allegations’ the attrition rate is liable to be horrendous. Will this be used to show how poorly served child abuse victims are by the criminal system, in the same way that Rape statistics are routinely massaged year in, year out? Even someone as aware as I am of how the media misuse facts and statistics, had allowed the furore regarding the unique place Rape occupies in the reporting of crime to pass unnoticed.

Unique? Yes, unique! The ‘conviction rate’ of all other crimes is reported on the basis of charges laid versus convictions in court. Thus we arrive at a figure of 57% of people charged with manslaughter ultimately convicted. Where rape is concerned, many people, if asked, would tell you that it has a low conviction rate. Indeed we are frequently quoted the figure of 6.5%, with the accompanying mantra that ‘victims are to believed’ and ‘more must be done to improve the conviction rate’ – leaving one with the impression that the majority, the vast majority, of ‘rapists’ go unconvicted by the courts. Year by year, money is poured into facilities to help the victims of rape, to organisations that provide support for rape. It is ‘never enough’ is the meme.

I was astounded to learn that if rape conviction statistics were recorded in the same way that every other crime conviction rate is recorded, you actually have more chance (58%) of being convicted of rape than of manslaughter!

Somewhere round about Jack Straw’s tenancy of the Home Secretary’s desk in 1998, a vital and barely noticed change was made, in that henceforth, rape convictions were to be compared, not with people charged, but with ‘allegations made’…and it is from that change that we arrive at the oft quoted figure of 6.5% conviction rate for rape. The sleight of hand is often achieved through misleading words, such as ‘only 6.5% of reported rapes are successfully prosecuted’ – see what they did there?

In an age of austerity, one that we are likely to inhabit for a long time, all the Charities, and the Government ‘arms-length’ agencies that specialise in supporting victims and the vulnerable, are scrabbling to secure sparse funding, to secure their jobs and incidentally, I suspect too, too, incidentally, for the benefit of their dependent clients. The media are under resourced and dependent on press releases from these bodies. It is an ill fated combination. One that too easily falls victim itself to a desire to promote fear and guilt in the public to fight the headline moral panics. Individuals will surface who are predisposed to promoting the panic that will fill a particular charities coffers, whether through donations or more usually by putting government ministers in a no-win situation whereby they can scarcely deny more funding for a particular cause.

Curiously, today sees Mick and Mairead Philpott given lengthy sentences for the manslaughter of six of the seventeen children they have between them – yet the child protection agencies and their celebrity ’placemen’ have been ominously quiet on the subject of this tragedy. Whereas at the merest hint that a fourteen year old might have offered and delivered a ‘blow-job’ to a celebrity they become almost hysterical with demands for ‘something to be done’, the idea that six children should have been heartlessly incinerated by their feckless Father has induced no comment. I find it hard to imagine a more profound case of child abuse.

Child abuse that could have been foreseen, if not to its gruesome extent, at least to the possibility that harm might befall one or more of the children. The circumstances were known. The man had a previous conviction for violence, stabbing a previous partner.  He  famously appeared on ITVs Jeremy Kyle show explaining the finer details of his ménage à trois to guffaws of laughter from the audience and the ITV staff. Light entertainment! Later, Anne Widdecombe in another ITV show brought publicity to his feckless lifestyle, which apparently brought rewards of:

 £20.30 a week child benefit for the eldest of the 11 children in the house and £13.40 for the other ten, totalling £8,023.60 a year.

His wife and Ms Willis had cleaning jobs. According to the HM Revenue & Customs website, his wife, with six children, was entitled to up to £20,560 a year in tax credits, and Ms Willis to up to £17,870 a year, totalling £38,430.

His wives’ wages could have taken his “income” to about £60,000 a year. Housing benefit covered the estimated £150-a-week in rent — a further £7,800.

Working tax credits and child benefits were paid tax free, meaning that Philpott’s account could have been similar to that of a man earning about £100,000 a year, putting him in the top 2 per cent of earners.

It is hard to escape the suspicion that the ‘culture and practices’ at ITV, by treating Philpott’s unusual lifestyle as a subject of light hearted entertainment, had contributed to producing a man who thought he could do no wrong. Hell, he was one of the few individuals in this country to receive a personal visit from a member of parliament investigating his lifestyle. Did no one refer his children to the child protection agencies?

And no demands for children in similar households to come forward and be ‘believed’ if they tell of life in the home of a man who resorts to casual violence whenever he doesn’t get his way, who relieves the taxpayer of the equivalent to £100,000 a year whilst he is lauded for his dubious sexual habits on television? No handwringing from Esther Rantzen? No Dame Janet Smith to spend millions examining whether the ‘culture and practice’ at ITV had any part to play in the horrendous life and death of those children?

What has happened to his remaining eleven children? Does anybody know? Does anybody care?

It appears to be a sad fact of life that not all child abuse victims are equal. Some are more valuable than others.

During the week I had recorded an episode of Piers Morgan’s interview series. A case of nothing else worth recording really – the others I have seen have been a succession of women agonising over some dreadful trauma in their life, not my cup of tea at all; Piers seems to have a talent for bringing out the tears and the ‘ahhh’ factor from the audience.

This episode was different, not just from other Pier’s interviews, but from television in general lately; this one was Karren Brady. It wasn’t her achievements that galvanised me so, it was her reaction to set backs in life. ‘why did you write books’; ‘I was turned down for a journalism college, and I thought, I’ll show them’. ‘How did you come to work for David Gold’ – ‘I went to sell him advertising, and he offered me a job on the spot’. Such an incredibly positive person.

Piers did his best to elicit the tears; ‘How did you feel when you had a miscarriage’. (How do you think she felt, you plonker!) But there was no ‘it was the worst moment of my life’, or ‘I still weep to this day’, no attempt to milk the moment for all it was worth, just a dignified ‘incredibly sad’ and onto the next question. She wasn’t traumatised for life by a footballer saying ‘I can see your tits’, she just snapped back at him – ‘well you won’t from Crewe’, and promptly sold him to Crewe football club. She sold her husband, footballer Paul Pecshisolido twice – there’s a pragmatic woman! Her phone has been hacked, during tense business negotiations – but we haven’t heard her wailing to Leveson. She just got on with life.

Reflecting on my evening’s viewing, I realised what a rarity it was.  Our screens are perpetually filled with whiners. When personal tax allowances are raised to bring thousands of low paid workers out of the sights of the tax inspector altogether – we don’t hear the jubilation of those who benefit, we don’t hear what they might do with the extra money; we are transported to Tower Hamlets to hear from a family with four children who have been out of work for two years – and can’t afford a holiday, and now ‘fear’ (always the fear!) that they may be asked to cut back further because the council gave them a four bedroom house and now say they only need three bedrooms and this ‘could’ (always the could!) result in £7 a week being cut from their housing benefit.

The great army of whine-managers make sure of that. I once calculated that 10% of the Scottish population  were fully employed holding the hand of the other 90%; listening to their tales of woe and hardship, ‘supporting’ them in their needs. Fictitious dramas on television displaying some rare event, a flipping cow dying on some deserted hillside, will be followed by the announcement ’if you have been affected by issues portrayed’ etc – and you know that someone is employed to sit at the end of the phone to listen to a stream of viewers who may once have heard of someone who is sure that they might have been in a village where a cow once died, and oooh, it was awful and they’ve never been able to get over the horror of it all. A child dies on holiday with its parents in a foreign land – a sad event; but before we know it, the ‘bereavement counselors’ have been moved into their local school to help the children get over the trauma of little Johnny not being at that school any longer.

Every possible hurt in life is being managed by an army of trained – and paid – whine-managers. Now that Greater Manchester Police are producing statistics to show how many Goths and EMOs get shouted at in the street, you can be sure that someone somewhere is registering a charity to support traumatised Goths. Someone else will be applying for a grant to renovate a derelict building as a drop-in centre for EMOs ‘too scared’ to dress as EMOs’ for fear of what might happen to them. No doubt the NHS are already scheduling laser operations to remove Goth tattoos for those who can show that since the age of 8 they had always known they were EMOs, and now they are 43 they wish to leave their Goth husband/wife and reveal their inner self to the public at large.

Social media is the new weapon of choice for the permanently outraged, who wish to attract the attention of the paid whine-managers. During the past fortnight, we have had the ridiculous spectacle of the Twittophobes working themselves into a lather over a man employed to ensure that men paid hundreds of thousands of pounds every week to kick a pig’s bladder round a field, actually turned up and kicked said pig’s bladder, who turned out to have parents who belonged to the Fascist party in a foreign country, half a century ago. The shadow Foreign Secretary, the son of immigrants himself, and Communist immigrants to boot, resigned his Directorship of the football club in protest at this risk of traumatising the fans in the terraces. Other footballers are ‘being supported’ in their distress at some neuron-challenged and inebriated dork allegedly shouting  ’put him on the bonfire’ in their general direction. I say allegedly, because no one can actually be found who heard that cry from the terraces, but the media reported it, so it must be true, and the footballers were black, so it must be racist; ‘Footballers against Racism’, in a straight nick from the ‘Giving Victims a Voice’ rule book of investigating traumatic claims, says it is convinced it occurred, even without evidence, and therefore something must be done to support the precious footballers. Presumably those fans had spent ‘every waking moment’ thinking about being racist, and were the most prolific racist chanters the UK has ever known…

Which brought my mind back to the Savile topic, and what has driven me on in my search for the truth about the Duncroft allegations. I was sent an excerpt from a blog post lurking in some dingy corner of the Internet during the week; it seems the writer has utterly missed the point and is labouring under the impression that I ‘am keen to protect the reputation of my old school’, as though Duncroft was some sort of upper class boarding school – though I have seen elsewhere – was it Vanity Fair? – that the ‘elite were fighting to get their wayward children in there’!!! Hilarious stuff. I have no brief to protect Duncroft’s reputation, I wasn’t aware that it had a reputation to be protected actually. What I am very keen on, and this blog has always been very keen on, dating to some years before Duncroft was ever a word the media had touched, was truth and honesty.

Honesty is not just a matter of the precise mechanics of how an incident is described, but also the  depth of importance it is given in the great scheme of things. When the media persist in using words like ‘abused’ to describe utterly minor and irrelevant incidents in someone’s past – then I am deeply offended. There is real abuse, child abuse, in the world. It is not well served by parading egotistical attention seekers who were once patted on the bum by someone in the public eye as ‘victims of child abuse’. Who should we blame for this state of affairs? Should it be the sad creatures who 30 years after leaving care are still to be heard whining and bleating ‘that they weren’t adequately supported’ on leaving care? Who cannot leave behind their fleeting moment of discomfort, the passing insult to their breasts, the arm that was put round them 30 years ago, which they now seek to use to see themselves included as ‘victims’ that require the services of the army of whine-managers?

Or is it the Whine-managers that we should blame? Those who seek to create a career out of parading these ‘victims’, encouraging them to hang onto past incidents and blow them up out of all proportion in order to seek the security of a substitute mother who will kiss and make it better with a cheque? Is it fair to say ‘blow it up out of all proportion’ – I think it is. Remember the original Duncroft allegations came from a woman who claimed to have witnessed – and ‘conspired in’ is not too strong a word – an incident during which a visitor to Duncroft ‘maybe’ – for was it under a blanket or not? – encouraged another girl to put her hand near his groin. Since they had arranged a code-word beforehand, you can be sure that they felt they could ‘arrange’ for this to happen if she sat next to him – yet this girl chose to sit next to him. She could have sat anywhere, she could have avoided the situation, if it even happened, but no, they allegedly conspired to ensure that it did happen. Was it a dare? A teen-age bet? Whatever; 30 years later at least one of the women is still trying to make a story out of it – even though the other girl involved apparently told police that she would like to ‘punch’ the first girl for dragging her into this tale!

That story has been taken up by the professional whine-managers, embellished, publicised, and used to create an industry. An industry which brings shame to Britain.  ’More high profile Savile arrests’ scream the media – as a jumped up taxi driver who may have been employed by the BBC at one time is arrested and charged with sexual offences that had nothing to do with Savile…

I find it hard to believe that a country which can produce Karren Brady can also produce middle aged women so pathetic, so terminally dependent, so outrageously devoid of any backbone and gumption, that their sad world revolves around reliving such minor incidents, if they even occurred, for the benefit of those who make a living out of peddling these tales. What also amazes me, is that for all these journalists now coming out of the woodwork saying ‘we knew all along he was creepy, never married, eyes too close together, those poor girls’ who have been wasting their time hacking the phones of third rate entertainers and past customers of Los Angeles prostitutes – not one of those investigative reporters ever thought to hack Savile’s phone! Too busy hacking the likes of Kim Kardashian’s phone to see if she had broken the heel of her shoe again, or Karren Brady to see what the overpaid footballers were up to. Not one of those girls ever thought to ring Childline, even anonymously. Not one of those investigative reporters thought to contact Barnardos, surely in the same business of ‘child protection’ as the erstwhile television ’child protectors’.

I see yesterday that Scotland Yard commander Peter Spindler has jumped ship from the appalling Yewtree ‘investigation that never was’. ‘Spindler’s List’ of 12 arrests, one charge so far, has become an embarrassment to the nation. The police involvement in the whine-managers dark arts will take a long time to live down. The justice system is damaged, perhaps irreparably. The spirit of Torquemada lives on, where debate is driven by prejudice and supposition, by fear not fact; the media preferring to give air time to the unhinged armchair moralists screeching ‘cover-up’ whenever their chosen celebrity unaccountably fails to make the ‘arrested’ list than to the likes of Karren Brady.

All I can say is God bless Karren Brady for convincing me that the entire septic isle hasn’t gone stark raving bonkers.

The Internet has correctly been concerned at what has been perceived as the loss of a ‘right’.  The proposals by the Association of  Chief Police Officers (Acpo) to refuse to release the names of people they arrest in the course of  criminal investigations.  The proposal has been condemned as secret justice and produced angry responses from all who claim to support ‘freedom of speech’. The ‘Leveson effect’ has duly shouldered the mantle of blame.

It seems to have escaped their notice that the ‘right’ to know the name of those arrested has never existed. 20 odd years ago, the Queen’s Bench Divisional Court in R v Secretary of State for the Home Department, ex p Westminster Press Ltd [1991] ruled that the media has no automatic right to be informed by the police of the name of a person who is under investigation or who has been charged by a criminal offence.

It has, of course, been the case for many years that the Police choose to ignore the fact that they don’t have to give names to the media – it can be useful to them to do so for many reasons. It is noticeable that in the current furore, the Sun, from atop their high moral horse, have listed a series of sexual crimes against children which came to light after arrests were made public. It quotes one of 80 victims to call the police after “Black Cab” rapist Jon Worboys (pictured above) was arrested. He was jailed in 2009.

The 24-year-old student said: “This will lead to guilty men walking free. I only knew about Worboy’s arrest because I saw his name in the paper. How am I and hundreds of others supposed to know police are looking into an individual if it is not publicised?”

Except that you can’t ‘trawl’ for other victims where the suspect is a teacher. Nope. Teacher’s are excluded from the great pre-charging paedo-hunt. By law. Legislation giving lifelong anonymity to teachers accused of committing criminal offences against children at their schools was embedded into section 13 of  the Education Act 2011. This anonymity does not apply to teaching assistants, caretakers, school ancillary staff etc. Nor does the anonymity extend to the teacher once charged with an offence – but what you can’t do is use the media to advertise that a teacher has been arrested and hope that other ‘victims’ will come forward so that you can progress to charges…

SELLING DAVID A PUP.

It’s been so long for me since I began the stressful and lonely path of ‘thinking outside of the box’ in terms of digesting the information I was being fed (and, of course, I often forget how blissful it must be to have faith in the media and the other ‘forces of good’). To give it a name I suppose I’d call it ‘personal empowerment’. I’m driven by a desire to get the most out of life, but I do not confuse this – as so many seem to – with ‘power over others’ and using people to further my own personal agenda.

In these 18 years since I started to really ‘open my eyes’ – the whole of my adult life – I have seen and experienced things I wouldn’t have otherwise noticed or encountered, or that I would have otherwise have put down to ‘luck’ or taken as written. In this time I have seen society and life in the UK descend to levels of banality even I didn’t foresee in such a short period of time. Or maybe I did (see my next article) I just hoped things wouldn’t happen so quickly?

The path of this self-education has taken in many authors and scholars – from the better self-help books, psychology and occasionally fiction; authors as varied Ayn Rand, Tony Robbins, M.Scott Peck, Stuart Goldsmith and David Icke. Taking no individual word as ‘gospel’ but going with my own sense takes self-belief I learned as an adult, not something I was spoon-fed as a child. For instance, although ‘life-coach’ and motivational guru Anthony Robbins has that cringeworthy kind of Whitehouse-endorsed corporate-friendly ‘your life is amazing’ Americanisms, there is no doubt that his love and self-belief based philosophy offers the open-minded a ‘yin’ to the ‘yang’ of the necessary but somewhat negative realisations of the Ickes and Goldsmiths.

Particularly in the area of ‘finding closure’ when someone is harbouring their own emotional damage, Robbins offers a valuable ‘forgiveness’ based antidote to the hate-based lawyer-assisted ‘closure’ proffered by the police and media which actually discourages forgiveness, encourages the damaged to wallow in hate and self-pity to their own detriment, and continues their own destruction in the name of being a ‘victim’. The only way to ‘get over’ abuse or emotional damage in the past is to empower oneself today – that doesn’t garner many column inches though, alas.

I would have thought this is the message the Mark Williams-Thomas’ of this society should be sending these all-important ‘victims’ but it is not. The sheer amount of real-life ‘monsters’ created by this culture of greed and hypocrisy seems to be never-ending – but the Mick Philpott’s & Sharon Matthews’ did what they did because of aspects of the media actively encourage such mindless attention-seeking and narcissism. As Stevie Wonder said nearly forty years ago, ‘Love’s In Need Of Love Today’.

It’s true – love is in need of love today. What we are subjected to is a daily bombardment of hatred and contempt, seemingly now balanced out by the phasing out of the natural process of questioning and weighing up what we are being told. We are expected to believe everything we are told by agents of the media, and the reactions if we don’t tend toward finger-pointing counter-accusations and attempts at ridicule – or, worse.

Education – in the true sense of the word – has been replaced by the promotion of ignorance and hate, philosophy replaced by soundbites. It cannot be accidental that the secondary school education system in the UK produces amazing exam results and very little in the way of ‘knowledge’, and that a huge ‘Generation Gap’ has opened up between those born circa 1989, and those born before. To have an understanding of anything you need to apply an understanding of ‘context’, particularly in historical situations. For instance, you wouldn’t have a monarch beheading his wives in the 20th Century Britain.

There has also been what I’d describe as an annexing of children from adults in the past 15 years or so which has resulted in a massive cultural gap (something that very much extends into shared knowledge and attitude). I pretty much got on with people 10 years older than myself as I did people 10 years younger by the time I was in my early 20s, and vice versa. Teenagers embraced the assent of adulthood generally by wanting to appear like adults themselves – it was essential to ‘grow up’ if you wanted to be accepted in adult environments such as pubs, clubs and workplaces, and it was a gradual and natural process. Youth-based movements have existed in the past, but they were always founded upon ideals, there is something rather transparent about drives to “get young people interested in policing” or politics etc when they appear to lack the general knowledge or interest to apply context or ideology. They exist to become puppets.

Which brings me round to the main point of this article – the spread of misinformation created to brainwash people with no actual interest or knowledge of recent history – and specifically designed to befuddle a major irritant to the ‘New Work Order’ controllers of ‘information’. David Icke is a man who, against all odds and in the face of considerable ridicule, has managed to identify and articulate matters of great importance in both our wider society and attacks on real knowledge over the past twenty years or so. Information – and I mean actual factual information – has come to light which suggests shards of the ‘truth’ Mr Icke and his followers have been seeking to  expose for all these years have been deliberately contaminated with misinformation as a planned distraction in the case of future ‘Exposure’.

There is no doubt that most of what Mr Icke – and others, sneeringly referred to as ‘conspiracy theorists’ by the mainstream media – have been writing about is founded in truth. The existence and aims of The Bilderberg Group (and it’s membership), the 9/11 controlled demolition, The New World Order – all sadly true, and – more importantly – backed up by evidence. Even the much-ridiculed ‘shape-shifting lizards’ seem to be not so ridiculous when faced with the reality of odious teflon politicians such as Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson.

Some people who pose a threat to the powers that be meet sticky ends in ‘accidents’, ‘suicide’ or ‘heart attacks’ – some are dealt with by other means. The way of dealing with David Icke has been to create the fact he is a misguided nutcase and his theories are the ranting of a madman – and in mainstream terms this has worked. After all, if he were to meet his maker via a plane crash or assassination, this would be seized upon by his loyal students as ‘proof’ of a conspiracy. Recently though, Mr Icke has fallen hook, line and sinker for a media conspiracy that has no evidence and no credibility – other than the kudos given it by Icke himself. In fact Mr Icke has fallen so deeply into these morally choppy waters I find myself wondering if he has been ‘bought off’.

I don’t think the ‘conspiracies’ I have suggested above are at all unlikely – my personal belief system is based on logic, if there is a logical reason for something to be happening I will err on the side of logic. For instance, the consequences of 9/11 (social and fiscal) have outweighed the supposed ‘cost’ have they not? If I am to buy into the subject of “institutionalised paedophilia” high up in ‘the system’ I would also suggest that the perpetrators of such evil practices would have cover and distractions ready for dispatch in the event these matters being leaked and thus become a matter of record. Indeed – if this level of systematic evil does exist there it would be utterly stupid not to plant various fairytales to distract those brave enough to venture down the path of uncovering those deadly deeds.

In my humble opinion, it is also astonishingly naive to not consider that the keenness of politicians and others woven into the fabric of the UK Government to attach themselves to popular entertainers and popular culture was to court popularity with the view of increasing their appeal to the young, to the baby boomers. If this theory wants testing it is something that is still going on today! If there are powerful paedophile networks at play, it would seem – to me, at least – that there would be a history of ‘misinformation’ scattered around regarding these matters, perhaps with unprovable tales of modern-day court jesters being involved? This is what I assume would go on, and as I have said I consider myself a logical sort of person.

Call me an idiot – I’m sure there are Ickesters who will do – but I do not see the correlation they do in the present posthumous demonisation of Jimmy Savile as a supposed ‘paedophile’ and their supposed cause of ‘exposing the dream world we believe to be real’.

When a supposed conspiracy is presented to the country as a ‘fait accompli’ on prime-time ITV (which is now far more in the idiom of ‘state television’ than the BBC ever could be) using the methods synonymous with state propaganda, is it not naive to expect leading conspiracy theorists to address the concerns immediately apparent to me (and, it turns out, many others)?

When the maker of said documentary surrounds himself in inaccurate claims, spends the next six months (and counting) dining out on his wafer-thin supposed ‘Exposure’ and has avoided completely an unscripted interview/questions-and-answers scenario does that not smack of ‘conspiracy’?

Where is the evidence? If I work on the principles promoted by Mr Icke, it is more important than ever that any issues of concern are cleared up to our complete satisfaction – surely? The truth is the posthumous vilification of Sir Jimmy Savile serves to fulfill several long-term agendas, not least the ‘buying off’ of Icke and his barmy vitriolic following. There are several ways ‘the powers that be’ could have dealt with this 20-year thorn in their side, be it the time-honoured ‘bumping off’ or the nouveau method of having some woman claim he brushed her right thigh in 1978 and then trawling him across the nation, but such methods would only serve to promote ‘The Cult Of David’ in the long term. It would appear the method chosen is present him as a crank and feed his sillier claims.

When I see Mr Icke and his fervent followers quoting hateful articles from publications such as The Daily Mail and the various Murdoch press, I despair. Maybe his mind has been well and truly blown – or, realistically, he has been bought off. For a man who’s basic message is ‘remember who you are, don’t believe the illusions’ is it not sheer hypocrisy to promote the agenda of the mainstream media when it suits just one of his more minor (and very shop-soiled) claims?

He has enthusiastically promoted the agenda of a certain Operation Yewtree – a Metropolitan Police operation set up to create a ‘smoke and mirrors’ illusion to distract the brainwashed public Icke claims to want to ‘awaken’ and also – even more threatening to our ‘freedom’ – to prevent others who may well know the Savile ‘allegations’ are garbage – from speaking out and addressing this ‘big lie’. This is not ‘smashing institutionalised paedophilia’ it is promoting the dubious agenda of a vicious mainstream media and encouraging the bullying of individuals by this corporate cluster of organisations.

Does he really think a police force colluding with the corporate press – 30+ ‘reporters’, 7 police vehicles and 20 officers to arrest a 67 year old buffoon for touching a grown woman’s breast in 1978 – is part of his ‘wider truth’? If not, why does he associate himself and his greater message to such injustice on the grounds that he was fed a red herring about Jimmy Savile many years ago – when NOTHING is being done to ‘expose institutionalised paedophilia’ other than the bullying of hapless slightly right-wing light entertainers?

For those of use not blinded by the false lights of ‘Savilegate’, it would seem that David Icke is finished – which can only be the long-term aim of his supposed enemies, and the reason his head has been turned. It’s one thing being swept along by a tidal wave of bullshit on the belief it may reveal a ‘greater truth’ but another thing entirely to submit to a hateful mainstream media whilst instructing people to “Get Off Your Knees”

When David ‘gets off his knees’ and smells the coffee, I might start to pay attention again. Until then, thanks David – for information on 9/11, Monsato, the post-9/11 wars, the infowar, Bilderberg and the NWO hierarchy etc – but no thanks.

I’ve enough to investigate and educate myself with now, without bothering with mainstream media bullying and engaging with a very real national ‘dumbing down’ of the populace. If we are to believe justice is destroying deceased entertainers with lies, trawling hate figures for unprovable historic sex crimes, supporting a corporate media who are embroiled in criminal activity with disgraced police forces and consuming exactly what we are told by dubious figures who will not allow themselves to be questioned that is something I cannot support.

There is a lot of wrongdoing going on the world and there has been for a long time now. In the face of the culture of the past 20 years phasing out intelligence and ‘general knowledge’ to a population more easily pleased and bovine than ever before, I don’t wish to waste my time and resources on individuals pointing their finger at the likes of Top Of The Pops.

“David Icke’s transformation over the past few months is akin to Howard Roark becoming a fervent supporter of his arch enemy Ellsworth Toohey in Ayn Rand’s ever-relevant novel The Fountainhead – as beguiling as it is foolish. I hope his new-found support of the police, ITV, The Daily Mail and Rupert Murdoch will provide him with whatever it is he seeking to benefit from – but this is not an agenda I can believe in”

©Chris Barratt

When mollusca trawl their glutinous way across our landscape, they have the evolutionary advantage of a third eye to spot potential predators. It’s called the pallial eye.

I thought I’d tell you something interesting pertaining to ‘Pallial’ before you all dropped dead from the excitement. The North Wales Police ‘Operation Pallial’ has been trawling our mediascape since last November and has finally come to an expensive decision. Even with added garlic it’s scarcely palatable. Chug it down folks, this escargot has already cost you £573,058.

Last November, a man, Steven Messham, founding member of the victimae, that strange sub-species of the human race that roams this once proud land endlessly looking for a compensation payout, found himself left out of the latest sprint to the compo cheque. He had already helped generate an inquiry, The Waterhouse Inquiry, which had sat for 203 expensively lawyer filled days listening to 650 witnesses who had felt unable to call in to their local police station to report their allegations that they had been abused in peace and quiet, but felt reassured by the safety of numbers and the full glare of the media light and the world’s listening ear and were thus able to unburden themselves of their hitherto concealed tale of woe.

During the course of that inquiry, Messham leapt out of the witness box and threw punches at a barrister, and was memorably described as ‘demonstrably untrue [...] some of his allegations are wholly inconsistent with earlier statements made by him to the police. In these circumstances we submit it is plain that his evidence must be approached with care‘. He claimed he had been sexually abused by 49 men and women, and physically abused by a further 26. 

He has already cost one newspaper £1,375,000 in libel damages after they took his word and published a story that he had been abused by a senior police officer; a story that became considerably embellished during the course of the trial – when this was demonstrated in court, he promptly swallowed a handful of tranquilisers in the witness box and had to be removed to hospital.

Subsequently he was found to have omitted the small detail of £40,000 in his bank account when claiming various benefits, was accused of having misappropriated some £65,000 from the victimae charity that he set up, although this was never proved; and even his own solicitor admitted he ‘may have fabricated some of his allegations of abuse over the years’.

I don’t think there is a final figure yet for the series of events surrounding ‘did he, didn’t he’ name Lord macAlpine as one of his abusers during the Newsnight debacle.

None of this matters, for what is undoubtedly true, or at least charitably believed by the authorities, is that at some point, less than 5,840 days after his birth, someone inserted a penis into his anus. 5,840 days is an important date. A penis in the anus 5,841 days after your birth can bring you a fulfilled life as a liberated homosexual, a life of elegant soirees,  exciting ‘gay’ cruises’; an entire industry dedicated to helping you enjoy this experience. Beware! The same action a mere 5,839 after your birth will traumatise you for ever, turning you into an inveterate liar, trouble maker, thief, drug addict, drunk – and none of it is ever your fault. Not in your entire lifetime is is your fault. You have become a lifetime member of the victimae.

To be instantly believed, whatever you say; to have the nation’s police force jump to attention at the very promise of another whisper from your victimae lips.  Thus it was that when Messham sniffed the air and announced that the Waterhouse inquiry hadn’t gone anywhere near far enough, there were loads more victims of abuse out there, it was all a cover-up; the conspiracy theory forums nearly wet themselves with excitement, and the North Wales Police jumped to attention. ‘Operation Pallial’ was born. They can’t afford to have anyone thinking they don’t take child protection seriously in these days. According to Detective Superintendent Ian Mulcahey, they must ’promote the perception’ that offences against children are taken seriously and investigated properly. At the same time, the ‘Macur Review’ was launched to investigate whether the remit of the Waterhouse Inquiry was to narrow. That review hasn’t reported yet.

The remit of Pallial is so wide that it includes anyone living in Wales at the time, in a children’s home, who believes that they have ever been abused, by anyone, male or female. Not just Bryn Estyn. The definition of abuse stretches from verbal abuse through to sexual abuse. Blimey.

Within the first two weeks of the operation being announced, the team had received 70 reports, this was to rise to 140 ‘complainants’ eventually. ‘Complainants’ to the police, for not all claimed to have been abused, some were offering information concerning others – but nonetheless, these have turned into the ’140 fresh victims of child abuse’ being trumpeted in the media today.

We are not told how many of the 140 claim to have been ‘verbally abused’ – ‘Come here you little Git!’; how many ‘physically abused’ – ‘kick me in the shins one more time and I’ll clip you round the ear!’ – or what proportion of claimants were relating allegations of matters unconnected with Welsh care homes, which according to the report will have been handed to the Chief Constable of North Wales and not be dealt with under Operation Pallial. Nor can we ascertain how many of the 140 complainants relate to the ‘systemic and serious sexual and physical abuse of children whilst in care at 18 North Wales care homes between 1963 and 1992′ aged between 7 and 19. Not that this will stop the media portraying the report as evidence of rafts of 7 year olds held down and forcibly raped by roaming gangs of politicians….

What we do know is that many of the complainants no longer live in North Wales, in fact could be anywhere in the world. They have been divided into:

1. New complainants who have not made any previous allegations to the police.
2. Complainants who have previously made disclosures - and now have more to tell.
3. Complainants who have previously been ‘spoken to’ by the police, and did not make any allegations at that time, but now wish to make disclosures.

Wherever they are in the world, a team of trained officers will be sent to meet them, a video taped interview will be conducted with them; a social worker will be sent to see them to provide specialist counseling and ‘on-going support’ and then, and only then, will a ‘trained analyst’ investigate the interview to see whether there is a ‘realistic prospect of conviction’ and whether it is ‘in the public interest’ to proceed with such a prosecution. Since at least 10 of the individuals named are believed to be dead, there will be no prosecution regardless of how much specialist counseling has been involved in getting little Johnny to disclose that the nasty man shouted at him 40 years ago.

The last child abuse victim, and she was a true victim, that I visited in Wales, is still as fresh in my mind as though it was yesterday. She was a beautiful girl, but sadly with an only partly formed mind. Her Father had been paralysed and was bed ridden. Her Mother walked into her house one day to find her brother-in-law laughing hysterically as he fornicated with the girl on the floor of the Father’s bedroom. He thought it was hilarious that his brother could do nothing to protect his vulnerable daughter. When the Mother reported this to the police, her house was mysteriously burnt down.  Fortuitously whilst they were all on a hospital visit. I will leave it to your imagination as to whom she blamed. There was no prosecution, the Mother deciding that protecting her daughter by moving away from that village was more important. When I met them at their secret address, they were living in a poky, moldy, miserable flat on an estate that had once been a mining village, now filled with drug addicts. They had had no counseling, no advice, no support. The girl had received £13,000 from the criminal injuries board – and No! There wasn’t anything that the mother could think of to buy that would improve matters for them. Nothing at all.

If you want to tell me that the taxpayers are spending £573,058 helping families like that – then I’m your girl, right behind you! But they are not. They are spending it reinvestigating the lies and kerfuffle caused by the likes of Steven Messham and his followers. Politically motivated, providing fodder for the media, an almighty pantomime.

It will get a lot more expensive yet.

‘How could we let this happen’ tweeted Tom Watson MP yesterday! For once I agree with him, though I’m not convinced we would be agreeing on the same thing…

Here’s another definition for you: Palliation. n. easing the severity of a pain or a disease without removing the cause.

Blimey! If we ever doubted the veracity of the two statements in my headline, we have only to take a quick run through the media today. Even the various pictures of Nigel Evans MP that are selected by the different thundering organs of Canary Wharf tell a story.

Nigel Evans MP has been arrested and accused of various sexual offences concerning ‘vulnerable victims’. Not one paper describes him as ‘creepy’, nor goes on to interview a talking head discussing the ‘rumours which have circulated for years’. Instead a raft of the great and the good have been interviewed at length to tell us what a charming, delightful, ‘good, decent man’ he is. I’m sure he his.

The Sunday Times went with a ‘studio’ portrait of a youthful and blushing Nigel, holding his copy of the Green Book with the portcullis prominently displayed to emphasise his establishment position.  They still managed a sly ‘Deputy Speaker in rape arrest’ to tickle the fancy of the conspiriloons breathlessly waiting for news of arrests in the ‘Top Tory Paedophile ring’ that they lust after, before going onto to point out that this is an allegation of Gay rape.

The Sunday Times failed to mention that Evans was interviewed by the then Chief Opposition Whip, Patrick McLoughlin, now Transport Secretary, over claims of ‘inappropriate sexual behaviour’ in 2009, coincidentally the starting date of the offences of which he is now accused. Allegations which were dealt with without being referred to Police. Why ever would that be? The Sunday Times has been a forerunner in the ‘he could have been stopped earlier’ articles regarding Savile.  Ah, but Nigel Evans is alive and well! Fully entitled to a decent hearing to clear his name of heinous allegations. This is no time for ‘premature adjudication’, says the legal department.  Possibly why the ‘comments’ are permanently closed.

The Sun claims ‘an exclusive’ – despite the Mirror having broken the story, and the Police confining themselves to a discrete “A 55-year-old man from Pendleton in Lancashire, arrested on suspicion of rape and sexual assault has today, May 4, 2013, been released on police bail until June 19,  2013.”
They go for the full house: Tory+Deputy Speaker+Gay+Rape. Helpfully adding a picture of Nigel with David Cameron to emphasise his connections, though in Savile’s case, they were only too keen to show pictures of Savile with Margaret Thatcher or the Pope in order to emphasise how ‘protected’ he had been. No such suggestion in Nigel Evans’ case – they have given him column space to point out that his accusers ‘know each other’…

Mr Evans said: “Yesterday, I was interviewed by the police concerning two complaints, one of which dates back four years, made by two people who are well known to each other and until yesterday, I regarded as friends. “The complaints are completely false and I cannot understand why they have been made, especially as I have continued to socialise with one as recently as last week.

The Sun also hedges its bet by including pictures of Our Nige with Ed Miliband, and two scantily clad young ladies (not all in the same picture regrettably…!).

The Mirror, which originally broke this story,  must take the prize for the most bizarre sideways wipe at poor Nige, with their headline of “Rape accused Tory uses make-up to disguise forehead bruise as he faces cameras to deny claims” – accompanied by a close up shot of said bruise, but no explanation, even speculative, in the accompanying article. I guess you don’t need to lead with the ‘Gay rape’ line when you’ve pointed out that Nigel is using make-up? Was he beaten up by the Police? Spent the night banging his head on the head board? We need to know!

They do give space to fellow MP Mark Pritchard.

Mark Pritchard, Conservative MP for The Wrekin, Shropshire, said: “Nigel Evans is a very popular MP and has established himself as a first-rate Deputy Speaker. “These are shocking allegations – but they are allegations and not proven. Time will tell if they stand up to proper legal scrutiny.”

The Telegraph use exactly the same photo as the Mirror, credited to Reuters, but without the bizarre ‘make-up’ claim – but then are the only paper to dig into their memory bank and reveal that Nigel was questioned by Parliamentary staff in 2009 over ‘inappropriate sexual behaviour’, which was apparently, a misunderstanding and was never referred to Police. They also helpfully hint that Nigel had been threatened with blackmail in the past over his sexuality. Comments are not open, any more than they were in the Mirror. Are they not interested in what their readers think of this latest development in the war against ‘inappropriate sexual behaviour’? Seems not.

Nigel Evans feet had not ‘touched the ground’ after his arrest before there were calls for him to stand down as Deputy Speaker – presumably the sight of him in the Speaker’s chair would have potentially traumatised other vulnerable victims, had they been one of the handful of people that actually watch Prime Minister’s Question Time.  Not that ‘feet not touching the ground’ has been a handicap to sitting in the Speaker’s Chair in recent times…

The Guardian, who surprisingly, go for the most flattering and youthful picture of Nigel, with just a hint of a fey blush to his cheeks, find an MP who is ‘disturbed’ by news of the arrest:

Brian Binley, Tory MP for Northampton South and a friend of Evans, said: “I was just deeply disturbed and shocked.

“I’ve known him ever since I’ve been in parliament and I came in in 2005. I consider him to be a very good friend. I know him to be caring, compassionate and in no way would he inflict himself violently on any other person”.

Not a single word of empathy with the alleged ‘vulnerable victims’…no in-depth articles regarding the difficulties of ‘coming forward’ or ‘being believed’, not one.

Nor is anybody ‘giving a victims a voice’ via publishing an ‘anonymised’ account from a brave ‘victim’ who has come forward to spell out the details of the allegations against Mr Evans.

Nobody has even mentioned Savile, or ‘Savile Police’ not even in an html link. I checked!

Indeed, although Mr Evans has been bailed until the 19th June, ‘he hopes that these matters will have been cleared up long before then’. He has not been charged with any offence as yet.

A quite remarkable show of unified and dignified responsible reportage.

What could be the reason for the main stream media coming over all coy between the last celebrity arrest and the arrest of Nigel Evans MP?

I chanced upon a remark in my recent reading that struck me as so callous, so utterly devoid of empathy, that I stopped short. Who had made this remark? A Family Liaison Officer!

As is my wont, I immediately started researching the qualities needed to be a Family Liaison Officer, and the training involved. The first surprise was the apparently scant attention to training given back in the early 2000s when this particular officer was trained. Even in 2006 a mere three days initially, of ‘team building’ and general communication skills, followed by another four days to ensure that all participants were fully aware of the requirements of the ACPO (2003) Family Liaison Strategy Manual.

It is universally acknowledged that the Family Liaison Officer’s role is one of the most sensitive within the Police Force – you are dealing, on a very intimate daily basis with people who have found themselves in the maelstrom of traumatic events, generally involving the unexplained loss of someone very dear to them.  They are not only grieving, but may be the subject of unwanted media intrusion or worse, media speculation that they may have played some part in the events. As a policeman it is your duty to report any suspicions you may have of family members – you are still an investigating officer – but you are also there as a professional hand holder, to explain police procedures, to keep the family informed, even to deal with such mundane tasks as helping to cancel credit cards where appropriate, to make the tea if necessary and to have an ever ready supply of Kleenex.

As a human being, you must surely have empathy for the loss the family have suffered particularly where there is no question of suspicion of any member of the family, and to reassure them that the Police are doing everything possible to resolve the situation. That some officers do a magnificent juggling act with these demands is exemplified here. I would have thought that the very last thing you would do is publicly decry the efforts of the Police and say that there were ‘fundamental errors’ in the way the case was approached, ‘witnesses not approached’, ‘insufficient searching done’ nor that your force appeared to ‘not have a clue’. What could be more callous than to announce to the family that their missing loved one ‘could still be up there‘ – referring to the area where they disappeared?

Can you imagine if, God forbid, your daughter had gone missing, never to be found again, being told by the one Policeman you had been encouraged to trust and lean on in your time of need, that his force was effectively incompetent, and that your daughter might have been found? It must be heartbreaking. Sadly, to this day, the parents of Ruth Wilson still don’t know what happened to their daughter. She has never been found. However, and curiously, they don’t seem to share the view of this family liaison officer that the force was remiss in their approach to the search.

 ’Most police forces didn’t treat cases like this seriously and people like us had to do our own publicity. Surrey police were one of the most positive forces. They came out that very night with sniffer dogs and helicopters with heat-seeking equipment. But the phenomenon of missing youngsters wasn’t a big feature of life back then.’

But then the date of this Family Liaison Officer’s callous remarks are significant. 7 years after Ruth Wilson vanished one day, never to be seen again – and eighteen months after he left the force. He was seeking a new career, as celebrity investigator, the must-have talking head whenever there was a major crime. The man with an inexhaustible supply of ideas as to how to turn crime into entertainment…is that why:

‘The refusal of the Wilsons to make themselves the centre of the story has certainly contributed to the lower profile of the case – later on they refused to appear on a game show where the audience would have been given the chance to vote for the next course of action taken by the family in the search for their daughter.’

I have no idea, in fact I cannot begin to think who on earth could have imagined, that taking the misery of one benighted family and turning it into a game show was the way to help them. The mind boggles.

This particular family liaison officer was, of course, Mark Williams-Thomas, who now sees himself as the celebrity policeman du jour; you can go to him if you don’t feel able to or want to, go to our national police force. He has a long line of criticisms of various police forces and their ‘not a clue’ attitude to policing.  Now independent, Mark can be particularly vocal about current issues…

Mr Williams-Thomas, who acted as the Wilson family’s liaison officer, wrote an internal report criticising the methods used by the force to try to locate 16-year-old Ruth.

“The report went to the superintendent, but it was never signed to indicate that it had been seen. I got no actual response at all, other than the report being handed back to me. To the best of my knowledge, no action was taken.”

Not just Police forces, foreign and home grown, he criticises anyone who dares to comment on where his methods are taking our long established legal system. He demands their censure. 

What has sparked his censure of this respected barrister?

She has long been pointing out the dangers present in our Family courts which have adopted a ‘therapeutic jurisprudence’ approach, resulting in the restriction of the right to due process, the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty, the right to be tried in public, the right to confront one’s accusers, and the right to ‘equality of arms’ (that is, not to be tried under significantly less advantageous conditions that those enjoyed by one’s opponent). Other protections, such as restrictions on the use of hearsay evidence, the right to consult the expert of one’s choice, and even the right to communicate in confidence with one’s lawyers or one’s MP, have been placed in second place to the sense that ‘neutral professionals’ were working in the best interests of the child and should not be hampered by outdated technicalities.

Those who have seen their families rent asunder, new born babies snatched from their Mother’s arms following allegations by those ‘neutral professionals’ made in secret courts, or seen loved ones secretly deprived of their liberty by the Court of Protection, have long hailed her a heroine. She is an expert in the field. Yesterday she penned a cogent and well argued article pointing out that this therapeutic jurisprudence was being applied to the field of historic sex abuse. She criticised the methods that those involved with the current Yewtree investigation – which of course includes Mark Williams-Thomas, are using. She pointed out the inherent dangers to our legal system.

Within hours the Press Officer for the NSPCC was demanding that her article be either reworded or removed. They threatened to ‘approach news desks’ (what with, we know not!). Other commenters were more graphic, calling for her ‘to be raped’ and ‘hunted into obscurity’. It is heretical to call into question the methods by which the modern moral crusaders attempt to define abuse.  Williams-Thomas himself called for her professional body to intervene – because she called for debate on where this new mode of justice is taking us?

I am reminded for some reason of Henry VIII. He was hugely critical of the Catholic church when they refused to reform themselves in line with his demands. He became hysterical with those who criticised him, denouncing them as heretics, demanding their heads roll, or sacking their homes and churches, as he rebuilt a ‘new’ church of which he was head, that developed new beliefs and rules and regulations.

However, it would be unfair to draw a comparison between the majestic figure of Henry VIII and Williams-Thomas; after all, he was but a pathological egotist whose only interest was in having his own way, achieving his own ends. He had no empathy with those whose lives he ruined along the way.

Whilst we were all busy reading the West Yorkshire Police Inquiry Report this morning, which having earnestly reported that it was keen to ‘separate myth and rumour from fact’ went on to tell us (amidst gasps of amazement) that Savile ‘had duped millions’ of us into believing ‘that he was a genuine celebrity’. (He wasn’t? Can we have a refund on our licence fee now then, now then? All those fabulous wages paid to him on the grounds that he was a genuine celebrity! Fraud!) something important was quietly rustling in the undergrowth.

Hidden away in a part of the BBC web site that most of us probably rarely visit, someone was concerned, not with the alleged misdeeds of long dead celebrity, but the with real sex abuse occurring right here and now, and about which something could and would be done.

No! Don’t be daft, it wasn’t Mark Williams-Thomas, nor the NSPCC – they are far too busy chasing headlines, donations and possible documentaries.

The Islamic Society of Britain, and the ‘Hope not Hate’ campaigning organisation, have teamed up to form the ‘Community Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation’ (CAASE) with the aim of mobilising campaigns against the grooming of under-age vulnerable girls, producing training material for faith leaders and creating local groups to work on tackling street grooming in areas where it is a problem.

What is of particular interest here, she says, picking her words carefully, IF the various articles that have been written are truthful, is that the under-age girls who need protecting from this activity are NOT from the same community that is organising something to help protect them. It is as though the Cat Protection League had offered to make sure every Dickey-bird got home safely, for it is alleged that this problem stems from young Muslim men who treat young white girls as ‘easy meat’.

You might expect that the Muslim community would react with outrage at the idea that their young men are at fault.

You might expect that the white working class communities, from where these young girls are believed to originate, would have organised something themselves to protect their daughters and sisters.

You might expect that the multitude of organisations that claim to exist in order to further child protection might be busy organising something, making documentaries, tweeting merrily into the night, (and sending their followers pretty pictures of fluffy cats when it all became too upsetting to think about).

You would be wrong on all counts.

It is a coalition of Muslim organisations that has stepped into the breach to do something practical about the young white girls out alone late at night and susceptible to grooming and abuse. The coalition, which is being formally launched at the Manningham Mills Community Centre on Friday, also has backing from the Muslim Council of Britain, Muslim Youth Helpline, Christian Muslim Forum, City Sikhs and the Church of England.

Pretty stunning news would you not say? Obviously not stunning enough for the main stream media…

I am seriously impressed, and humbled. Thank God (and Allah) that someone is going to do something for those girls. It’s about time that we saw something resembling child protection in the UK.

Can I pose a question to you? When you go to fill up your car, do you search out the most expensive petrol to buy? No?

Surely you have a moral duty to do so? You earn your money in the UK, yes? Then surely just because the law currently allows you to shop around for the cheapest place to buy your petrol that is no excuse for taking advantage of the law? If you live near the southern ports, do you think it reasonable to cross the channel to buy cigarettes and wine in France?

Are you not exhibiting signs of tax avoidance by shopping around, since certainly VAT increases in direct proportion to the base price – the more you pay for fuel, the more VAT the government recovers? Wouldn’t that be behaving like our MPs who claimed that maximising their expenses was ‘allowed’ by the rules? 

So do you think that perhaps you have a moral duty to pay as much into the exchequer as possible, or do you think the government should pass laws that stop you shopping around for the cheapest fuel, forcing you to pay the maximum for fuel that you could, out of the money you earn in the UK?

Or does size matter? Do you only have this moral duty when you reach a certain income bracket? Can morality be adjusted to ‘fit’ like a pair of too long trousers?

I’m sure you have twigged why I am asking – the spectacle of first Google in the UK, and now Apple in the US being forced to take the ‘perps’ walk and be hauled in front of the nation like naughty schoolboys to have their bottom smacked for shopping around and finding the cheapest place to pay their taxes – as allowed by the laws passed by those very same MPs? If they do have a moral duty to pay more than the law says they should, then we need to be told where the cut off point is; shall we have jobs advertised in the Guardian – a vacancy arrives for a new Director of Social Services: Pay scale – ‘off the wall’, morality laws apply! Should Lottery tickets carry a warning that ‘morality laws may apply if this is a winning ticket’. Will we see afternoon TV adverts asking whether ‘you were told or understood’ that morality laws could apply to you if your sister bought you a winning lottery ticket?

Just asking like. Because we seem to be entering a whole new world of laws that only apply in certain emotive circumstances, according to the result of the latest focus group. Pinch a bottom in Gateshead when you are a nonentity and you are a cheeky chappy, pinch a bottom 40 years ago and then become famous, and you are a paedophile. Have sex with 14 Pakistani’s and you are exercising a ‘lifestyle choice’; refuse to have sex with one geriatric entertainer and you are a traumatised victim for life. Shop around for where to pay your fag tax and you are a hard pressed working man, shop around for where to pay your corporation tax and you are an evil conglomerate.

It is not just in the land of law that the victimal hierarchy applies; we have a classic example in the world of hand outs. Specifically hand-outs in respect of sex. This is not to be confused with prostitution, I know both of them involve a payment for sex, but this is totally different. It is understandable if you are confused. One is a voluntary payment made by the purchaser to a hard pressed ‘sex worker’ honestly toiling her way through the beds – or back seats – of the nation’s menfolk; the other is a retrospective payment for ‘closure’ made by the nation’s tax payers 40 years later to people who were too scared to put their hand out up at the time.

We have had Mssrs Pannone & Co complaining that Savile’s estate which had been left to several charities for the benefit of unknown victims of something or other was ‘being stripped out. It’s as if they’ve thought they can make money out of this, as if they’ve viewed the whole thing as a gravy train’.

Wow! We can’t have victims of say quadriplegia viewing Savile’s estate as a gravy train – that money should be going to proper victims.  Real victims of groping and pinching and serious stuff like that.

Except that not everybody agrees. A surprising ‘not everybody’. Like The National Association for People Abused in Childhood.

They have ‘concerns about large amounts of money being given directly to victims‘. They think ‘It’s not always helpful to dole money out to individual survivors’, in fact their Chief Executive says: ’I know from personal experience that for vulnerable people, receiving large sums of money is not always the best thing. Money should always come with an offer of help and support. We think survivor organisations are better placed to manage that.’

Or put another way – they think they should be in the first carriage of the gravy train, quite who should be in the second carriage is not clear – the quadriplegics or the gluteus maximus tāctumii?

They’ll be lucky if there’s even standing room – the lawyers are already in the window seats, full English breakfast and an ironed copy of the Times on order. Leafing through their Latin phrasebook to find a suitable term for ‘me first’!

Will the ‘morality laws’ apply to the winners when the train finally comes to rest?

Back some 20 years ago, when the sun still shone in summer time, and young army lads only got beheaded in foreign places so there was no need for a focus group to tell the Prime Minister what to Tweet on the subject, a group of gay young middle aged blades got up one morning and  - simultaneously – thought to themselves, I know what would make this Bank Holiday go with a bang, I’ll get someone to nail my nipples to a bread board. What? You old fuddy duddy, the thought never occurred to you? Still buttering your toast on that bread board? Bor-r-r-ring!

They were so enamoured of this idea, that they made a video of ‘wot I did on my bank hols’. They added a few spicy extras, oh, like putting a fish hook through their penis – sterilised naturally –  and played it back to themselves every time ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ came on. They didn’t sell the video, or even loan it to anyone, but eventually a copy came into the hands of the morality police. Operation Spanner was born.

There cannot be a law student alive who doesn’t remember the details of the subsequent court case; R v Brown. The question of whether an adult of full mental capacity can consent to being injured in the name of pleasure is one we have all argued over. Algolnagnia See? I can still remember the proper name for it. And the fact that you can’t. Consent that is. The full details of the long and drawn out judgment are mercifully lost in the mists of time, but I do recall that it included discussion of just about every sadistic sexual practice in existence. Criminal Law students are made of stern stuff. Or used to be. It seems that today’s students, even the creme de la creme at Cambridge are not so hardy. They reeled away from an exam which asked them to consider:

Vapours all round, not least in the Daily Mail and Telegraph. What could become of young minds asked to contemplate such a ‘horrific question’? An undergraduate identified only as Miranda JP wrote on Twitter:

Eventually Miranda was unmasked as a third year English student who has now wisely protected her Tweets…. English students are not made of such strong stomached material as law students.

It does pose the question of what happens to the minds of those who work in the area of criminal prosecutions for sexual deviancy. Are they not as other men (or women)? Immune to the corrupting influence of viewing and hearing of sexual deviancy?

Today our shy and sensitive Prime Minster, Cammeroid, has emerged, all pink and glistening, from the rear end of yet another focus group to announce that he has discovered the way to prevent further child murders like those of April Jones and Tia Sharp. Not before time – they have been occurring since the beginning of recorded history. Several thousand years ago – and yeah! the cause has been found to be that well known tax dodging global giant, Google, not removing pornographic images from the Internet. That’ll be the same Internet that has just celebrated its 30th birthday…

Apparently it is the Internet which is responsible for the current strange phenomena of geriatric celebrities with a connection to the BBC, however tenuous, suddenly turning into child abusers 30 and 40 years ago. It doesn’t seem to have afflicted geriatric golfers, or geriatric dustmen, or even geriatric policemen, just geriatric artists.

 The Prime Minister told The Mail on Sunday last night: ‘I am sickened by the proliferation of child pornography. It pollutes the internet, twists minds and is quite simply a danger to children.

I don’t doubt for one moment that child pornography is an addition to the ‘fount of human knowledge’ that we could well have done without – like nailing one’s nipples to a bread board – but someone has to be aware that these things occur, and if it is really true that once one has glanced upon such images, one is irredeemably corrupt and on an unstoppable path to being a paedophile and a danger to all children, including one’s own – then what are we saying of the legal profession; the judges, lawyers, specialised policemen both past and present who spend their working lives surrounded by this material?

 This week there has been uproar because a school teacher who is said to have viewed ‘child porn‘ was allowed to return to work (interestingly we are only usually told the severity of this alleged ‘porn’ when it is category 5 on the new SAP scale – Geoffrey was found to have viewed 143 images at level 1 on the old COPINE scale) -

Non-erotic and non-sexualised pictures showing children in their underwear, swimming costumes from either commercial sources or family albums. Pictures of children playing in normal settings, in which the context or organisation of pictures by the collector indicates inappropriateness.

The consensus of opinion seems to be that even setting eyes on pictures of children in swimming costumes from family albums is sufficient to turn you into a danger that should not be allowed to be near children.

So what of policemen, past and present, who must gaze upon, not once but twice, thrice and analyse,  pictures of level 5 seriousness? Are they immune to the dangers by virtue of being policeman? Obviously not; in just one police force I have discovered a string of policemen who having once viewed child porn have gone on to become deviantly corrupted. In the linked case, after the man had ceased to be a policeman but had chosen to continue working in the field as a private investigator. There is no mention in the article of him being banned from further contact with children – even his own, and statistically it is his own children who will be at greatest risk from him if the connection between viewing ‘child porn’ and being ‘a danger to children’ is proven.

Whilst we are on the subject of protecting children by asking Google to ‘remove all images from the Internet which could corrupt’ (surely about as sensible as asking British Telecom to cease listing the phone numbers of those who like to make indecent phone calls) should we not be more circumspect in removing all children from the environment of those who have professionally viewed ‘child porn’?

How can we be concerned about children being in a supervised environment for 8 hours a day with someone corrupted by having viewed children in their swimming costumes and yet so complacent about children being in an unsupervised environment for 24 hours a day with an authority figure who has viewed the most depraved and illegal images?

I can foresee an outcry when social workers snatch the children from the homes of all policemen, private investigators and judicial figures who have been involved in prosecuting these terrible on-line child porn crimes, but I can see no other solution – no matter how fond of cats they are.

It might not be a popular move amongst those who see this field as their life’s work – but surely the safety of the children comes first?

798 years ago today, King John set his seal on the Magna Carta. The contents of that historic document had been bitterly argued over for four days. During those days, as the Barons struggled to wrest the absolute power of a monarch from his grasp and extract the concessions that we refer to today as ‘the rule of law’, the King rested in his hunting lodge, journeying each day to the Runnymede meadows via a specially constructed underground tunnel.

The King was unwilling to be stripped of his sovereign right to chop off your head merely because he thought your eyes were too close together. He needed no permission to prosecute a citizen. It was the Barons who wished to see that sovereign right balanced by rights accorded to the accused:”No free man shall be seized, or imprisoned, or disseised, or outlawed, or exiled or injured in any way, nor will we enter on him or send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land.”

They wanted the protection that we enjoy today – that of being ‘innocent until proven guilty’ in a court of law. They wanted potential accusers to stand in public and state their case, not whisper in the King’s ear. They wanted the opportunity to refute allegations of wrong doing, and to have the two versions adjudicated by the calm and ”lawful judgment of his peers”, not decided by the King and his friends.

In short, that part of the Magna Carta was centred on the rights of the accused. We are in danger of losing those historic rights as our Justice system, which now oversees the power of the Crown to punish citizens, is ever nudged in the direction of achieving a ‘social justice’ on behalf of the victim.

We no longer demand that accusers always ‘stand in public’ and state their case. We allow ‘vulnerable victims’ to remain in the shadows, behind a curtain or via video link. We don’t demand that their accusations are backed by solid evidence, or rather we consider that solid evidence consists of two or more victim’s alleging the same offence has occurred. We don’t demand that the victim is particularly specific in their allegation; we take into account the distress caused to them, the length of time since the offence occurred, and say ‘roughly’ will do.

We say that even if the Crown doesn’t think it possesses sufficient evidence to prosecute, or continue a case, that the ‘victim’ should have the right to review that decision. We encourage the victim to make a statement to the court telling of how much distress the offence has caused them – and that this is taken into account in the ultimate sentence.

We even say that if a man has been acquitted of an offence,  the ‘victim’s rights’ demand that he can be prosecuted a second time – so the accused can never have absolute finality in the matter. 

Our Justice system is no longer centred on curtailing the power of the Crown to ‘injure in any way’ the ordinary citizen, but to deliver an outcome which is acceptable to the emotional and distressed victim, or those who cry out on his behalf.

Many of these changes have been wrought or are proposed in response to the current exceptional spotlight which is being shone on the emotive subject of child abuse.  The subject has largely achieved public prominence in the wake of the ‘Savile’ revelations of alleged wide spread child abuse by the entertainer. The flood of allegations came in the wake of the ‘Exposure’ television programme which reported on the claims of abuse at Savile’s hand made by a small group of girls from an approved school in Surrey.

Girls who truly walked in King John’s footsteps.

The underground tunnel to Runnymede has long been blocked up, though the entrance is still visible. The great Hall where King John dined with his advisors, mulling over the demands for the rights of the accused, a  staff meeting room. The chamber where he no doubt tossed and turned in his sleep, now a bedroom in a luxury flat. But Duncroft Hall, King John’s hunting lodge, still exists; it became Duncroft Approved School.

Perhaps it should be a national monument, the place where justice for the accused started – and finished. Happy Birthday to the Magna Carta. 798 years old today – what remains of it.

Let’s see how good a detective you are!

Last night I watched one of the ‘Britain’s Secret Homes’ series; I’ve found it fascinating, full of nuggets of useless information –  just my sort of thing, or ‘right up my street’ you might say! To my amazement, last night they were literally ‘right up my street’, 36 Craven Street, W.C.2 to be exact. I once lived at Number 31.

I have written before of how I ended up living in two rooms at the top of that house. Initially I was squatting in the roof top cabin, but eventually managed to regularise my position and rent two rooms on the top floor from British Rail. They were officially ‘offices’, and I had to pretend that this was indeed the use I put them to.

There was no kitchen, but underneath the arches of Charing Cross station there was a stall which served tea and a slab of fruit cake round the clock, and in adjoining Villiers Street there was a Mom and Pop Italian cafe that served cheap food. Besides, my friend Nicky had the basement photographic studio, so I could always retreat down there in the day time for a cup of tea.

There was no bathroom either, just a toilet on the first floor that served all the offices below. No matter, in those days the Oasis swimming pool in nearby Endell Street still retained its public baths. Immense cast iron affairs with no taps. For a shilling you were issued with a large towel and a long stick – the stick was for the specific purpose of banging on the door when you wanted more water. You would sit submerged up to your neck in those mammoth baths, and as they started to cool, bang on the door and back would come the response ‘Ot or cold, Miss’ and a wheel outside would be winched into action until you yelled ‘Stop’!

There was a wine bar in Villiers Street, reputed to be the oldest in London; I’ve no idea what it is like to day – it still exists, I’ve just looked it up – but back then it was under six inches of dust and nothing seemed to have changed in a hundred years. The clientele were an exotic crowd, some very camp individuals from nearby theatre land, a dwarf with a lethal line in filthy jokes, and some retired ladies of the night. Although I didn’t drink then, a glass of ginger beer and an evening people watching was better than any television for entertainment.

I was riveted last night to discover that No 36, Craven Street was effectively the first American Embassy in London. The home of Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States. I had no idea. Blue plaques didn’t exist then.

The programme sent me off to Google earth to see what Craven Street looked like today. Half of it seems to have vanished, replaced by a glass and steel monstrosity – can anybody tell me what it is? 31, Craven Street, my old ‘home’ obviously no longer belongs to the Railway company – it has been sold - £2.7 million in 2003? Blimey, they must have installed a bath or something!

What has really stumped me though, and I would love your help with, is information on the cartoonist who rented the glass studio on the roof. (Now a penthouse roof terrace, no less!)

He signed all his cartoons ‘Mac’ – but he wasn’t the famous Mac from the Daily Express. He was no slouch though, and I can remember that many of the cartoon were in fact menu cards from the Carlton Club, with each individual present depicted – and subsequently signed by various war time politicians. There were dozens of them littering the studio floor – and I think I am correct in saying that my first husband eventually sold them for a relative pittance.

I had made spirited efforts to trace him back then – mostly because I wanted to add the glass studio to my ‘accommodation’; the railway estate office were able to tell me that before the war he had sent them a cheque for £50 which had effectively paid his rent up for something like 50 years, and so there was nothing they could do. They gave me the address of his wife, somewhere in Sussex, and I did speak to her on the phone.

Such a strange tale she had to tell. They had a beautiful old farmhouse and land in Sussex, she said, and were well placed financially, but she only saw him once a year. He had become a ‘gentleman of the road’, a phrase you never hear today. Sleeping in barns and hedgerows, he tramped the country, trading cartoons for food when he needed to. Once a year he would walk up her drive, spend a few hours with her, collect a small amount of money – and then disappear again.

He obviously hadn’t ‘forgotten’ who he was; he had taken care to financially secure his studio before he went off; he was obviously very well connected politically in his day – but I can find no trace of him.

I know that many of you are journalists, or politically well connected – could you tweet a link to this piece to anyone you think might be able to help?

I wish I’d realised at the time, just how much I would value this sort of thing one day.

The Urban Dictionary describes the word ‘Pants‘ thus: Adj. British slang. Not good; total crap; nonsense; rubbish; bad; woefully inadequate; useless; a waste of time and space.

I just thought I’d mention that before I told you that the NSPCC has today announced that their brand spanking new campaign is to be called – wait for it – ‘Talk Pants’!

The NSPCC has belatedly accepted that having celebrity pretendy policemen tweeting manically about the latest ‘questioning’ of some geriatric comedian who may or may not have put his hand on the bum of a 15-year-old 40 years ago is all very well when it comes to garnering donations from well intentioned middle-aged cat lovers, and works wonders for getting your name plastered all over the media – but it doesn’t actually do anything for the 90% of sexual abuse victims who never get to meet a celebrity in their entire miserable lives – nor a celebrity policeman.

As of today, they have turned over a new leaf – in future their attention will be on those 90% of genuine horrific child abuse victims.

Peter Wanless, chief executive of the NSPCC, said children needed to know “stranger danger” was not the biggest threat they faced. “The shocking case of Savile has horrified many parents and understandably it has heightened concerns around sexual abuse. But most abuse is closer to home and if we are to tackle this issue we must prevent it before it even starts,” he said.

Well, hurrah for that – but wait – how exactly are they going to tackle this issue? How are they going to use all those extra donations to protect these children?

This is the charity’s biggest campaign since the Full Stop fundraising campaign which raised £250 million. Although the campaign raised awareness of the issue, critics said it did not appear to reduce the incidence of child abuse which appeared to be the objective.

Um, they are going to leave it up to ‘parents’ to deal with it….

Mr Wanless said he was not ordering parents to do anything but most since want to protect their children, this was a way to help.

“I am not telling parents what to do. We are giving them the opportunity to step up, help them with what to say. Who as a parent does not want to protect their children?

“Who as parent does not want to protect their children.” That old rhetorical question!

The biggest group of young children at risk, is those who suffer from what is euphemistically called ‘learning disabilities’ these days. ‘Learning Disabilities’ range from the mildly ‘thick’ and poorly educated – right through to scraps of humanity, lovingly nurtured by those who gave birth to them, but without any means of communication whatsoever, deaf, dumb, blind, and often horrifically physically handicapped. My heart goes out to those parents as to no other group of people. The law forces them to send their ‘child’ to school every day.

‘School’ is another euphemism in this instance. It often amounts to little more than what the rest of us might consider ‘day care’. Every morning a bus will arrive, driven by a man or woman they may or may not know from Adam, who will take their child to a centre where parents may or may not be welcome to drop in whenever they please. There, their child will be fed, amused by coloured lights played on the ceiling, diapers will be changed, games will be played, by a group of people they may or may not know from Adam. Their only reassurance in this system is that none of those people will actually have been convicted of any offences involving young children. (See CRB checks passim).

Many of these children, in the absence of effective means of vocal communication, will be endearingly tactile and touchingly trusting, and pitifully vulnerable. The end result is a form of torture for anxious parents which cannot possibly be fully appreciated by those of us who do not have to endure 18 years of it. These are parents, Mr Wanless, who would willingly and without your prompting, explain to their child that “the parts of their body covered by underwear are private and no one should “ask to see it, touch or kiss them” there. It also urges them to say to no to family members or other people they love if they want to touch them there, and then tell someone what has happened”. If only they could.

Perhaps some of that £250 million war chest you have amassed could be used to pay Inspectors to go into homes like Winterbourne, on a regular and unannounced basis? You know, like the old cruelty man. Old fashioned idea, but being all modern and media savvy is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Then there are another large group of children at risk, those to whom the plural ‘parents’ is a mystery. ‘Parent’ they would understand. Or ‘Parent accompanied by long string of Uncles’. Some of them will be caring enough to have already explained to their child that ‘the parts of their body covered by underwear are private and no one should “ask to see it, touch or kiss them” there’. They will be the ones who have no need of your patronising ‘pants‘ campaign. but there will be others, sadly, who will be over occupied working out where the next bottle of Vodka is going to come from or whether to have the full colour tattoo or save the money for a rave in Ibiza. I fear your campaign will be lost on them. Assuming they can even read.

Perhaps some of that £250 million war chest you have amassed could be used to pay Inspectors to stalk the corridors of social housing, on a regular and unannounced basis? You know, like the old cruelty man. Old fashioned idea, but being all modern and media savvy is not all it’s cracked up to be.

There is another smaller group of children at risk – those who actually do have ‘parents’ – and one of those parents is the very one who is “touching or kissing them there”. Do you not think your expensive campaign might be a tad wasted on that parent – even on the other parent who shares the house with them? Perhaps if the old ‘cruelty man’ was in better evidence and more accessible to these children, they might be encouraged to speak up sooner? Just an idea, you know, after all, we now know that Child Line, which you bought from Esther Rantzen, did absolutely nothing, heard not a peep, from – what was it you said? The possibly 1300 victims of Savile? That sounds to me like the largest field trial ever of the idea that kids would go into a phone box and talk to a stranger over the phone of such matters. Didn’t work, did it? So dump it, and go back to real people in places where kids go….

Still, that was quite some admission from you, that the majority of parents now think that the greatest danger to their child might be bumping into a celebrity in the corridors of the BBC and getting their bum touched:

Many parents appear to be confused about where the real danger lies. Over half said “stranger danger” was one of their top concerns for their children, yet it is well established that 90 per cent of sexual abuse is perpetrated by someone known to the child.

Whose fault is that, eh? Who confused them? Who left thousands of children at risk because their parents thought that ‘stranger danger’ was the biggest risk to their child?

Well, blow me down, if it wasn’t the NSPCC, and the ghastly NAPAC, and their involvement in the Yewtree charade.

By God, you have along way to go Mr Wanless, before you can ever again lay claim to being an organisation that is about ‘protecting children’. Now get on with it. You’ve had your flirtation with celebrity and oodles of publicity – now get back to the hard grind of actually protecting some of these children. It’s ‘pants‘ I know – not glamorous, but someone has to do it.

I had not thought when I first put pen to paper on the Savile affair, that it would still be lustily gorging every spare moment of my time months later. I doubt very much that the handful of 70s Duncroft girls had any idea where or rather what their allegations would lead to.

Eight months later, the main stream media take every opportunity to denounce a man who has never had the opportunity to defend the claims. Amusingly, today, the same media, the same journalists, are dusting off tired old phrases like ‘Stalinesque show trials’ as they denounce the Russian judicial system for at least having the grace to hold a post-humous trial in respect of the deceased lawyer Sergei Magnitsky before denouncing him – an event which has apparently ‘dragged the Russian judicial system into territory that remained uncharted even at the height of Stalin’s 1930s show trials’.

Savile wasn’t granted a post-humous trial, nor a post-humous investigation – merely a post-humous collation of tawdry allegations that allegedly gave ‘Victims’, if not ‘Veracity’, a ‘Voice’.

Since those first blog posts, now read by some 90,000 people, I have been inundated with e-mails. One memory stick alone contains over 5,000 of them. I didn’t know I would end up spending my pension on ever larger memory sticks. I have had e-mails, it would seem, from just about every girl who ever set foot in Duncroft, in the 60s, and the 70s; from old staff, parents of girls, people at the BBC, NHS staff, lawyers, other journalists, academic researchers, friends and relatives of Jimmy Savile himself, and  a glorious and eclectic range of every nutter on the Internet. Mr G no longer even raises an eyebrow at some of the people he has found himself answering the phone to.

I have amassed so much information, that I admit I have been overwhelmed at times – and a tad despondent. So much to collate, just one woman to do it. Yesterday was one of those days when I woke up wondering why I didn’t just put up the shutters and get on with my life.

‘I’d say so publicly myself, but I’ve still got a career/mortgage to think of – please don’t mention my name’. £1 for every time I have heard a variation of that phrase – roughly translated by me at times as ‘please stick your head above the parapet on my behalf Ms Raccoon’.

Today I woke up and found that someone else has – most successfully – stuck their head above the parapet. A one man band; if he did ever whine as I have, that it was all too much for one person, no one heard him. He just got on with the job. I salute him.

First my thanks to the indefatigable Dr. Ros Burnett of www.factuk.org  for bringing it to my attention. (If you have any spare pennies, donate them to F.A.C.T, they are an organisation dedicated to supporting Carers and Teachers who find themselves on the wrong end of false allegations. Even false allegations can ruin a career, and leave a man or woman treated as a pariah in their community). Ros sent me details of some work that David Rose has been doing. I hesitate to describe David as a journalist, that word is virtually a low grade insult these days, so I will call him an investigative researcher and author. A damn fine one too. David, in turn, had brought up to date word to a conference Ros was organising, of a case he had previously investigated and the work of Noel Hartnett.

It is Noel Hartnett who has really earned my admiration, though David Rose comes a close second. Noel was the deputy head master of another approved school, St William’s, in the village of Market Weighton. If you want to read the full version of the long saga of false allegations of sexual abuse by the staff, the millions spent on legal services to investigate them, the thousands of wasted police man hours giving these spurious ‘victims’ a ‘voice’ – a voice which bellowed its way through no less than five intense inquiries into the allegations – then you will find the salient details here in an earlier article by David Rose.

What cheered me today, was the role Noel Hartnett has played in these events. Because he had been under suspicion, indeed charged, during the course of the second (‘Aldgate’) inquiry  - which resulted not just in a ‘not guilty’ verdict, but the judge making a point of saying that he left his court ‘an innocent man without a stain on his character’ – Noel had a huge cache of documents amassed during his own trial.

As the fifth inquiry ‘Operation Reno’ took hold and some of the same people were arrested yet again, this time on even more serious charges, Noel Hartnett turned to his papers from the Aldgate inquiry – and noticed something odd.

I have no doubt he no more wanted to involve himself in this unhappy period of his past than I did in the Duncroft saga – but whilst the St William’s saga differed somewhat from Duncroft in that there had undoubtedly been some genuine physical abuse to one boy, a matter Noel Hartnett had tried to report initially, and for which the Head Master, James Carrager pleaded guilty and was jailed for seven years,  he was quite sure that the new allegations were false. He didn’t turn his back on the matter. He sat down with his immense pile of papers and achieved quite dramatic results.

Noel went to the solicitors in charge of defending the claims against the De Salle Brotherhood, the Roman Catholic organisation that ultimately controlled St. Williams, and was allowed sight of all the documents and claims that the ‘ambulance chasing’ personal injury lawyers – Jordon’s – were sending them.

He compared them to the register of staff and pupils that had been assembled during the Operation Aldgate. That quickly dismissed some of the near 200 claims that had amassed as a result of mass advertising on the part of Jordon’s – some of the pupils alleging sexual assault simply hadn’t been at the school at the same time and the staff they were now accusing! Whodathoughtit?

Turning to the remaining claims, he discovered that some of them belonged to people who had claimed to have been the victim of physical assault in the earlier trial – and their claims dismissed as lies after exhaustive investigation; but were now claiming to have been the victims of serious sexual assault. He was able to trace the evolution of the claims and discredit them.

He did a lot more than that. He made a complaint to the Legal Aid Agency. Smart move. Jordon’s had a ‘block contract’ for legal aid – as do Pannone’s and some of the other firms involved in the Savile saga. It allowed them to do their own ‘due diligence’ as to whether there was any merit in a claim before getting a legal aid allowance for yet another client. They are supposed to ‘take appropriate steps to ensure that there is a sound foundation to the allegations being made’.  By now it wasn’t too difficult for Noel to show that Jordon’s patently hadn’t shown such due diligence.

In some cases the alleged ‘abuser’ didn’t even exist, never mind wasn’t there at the same time. Jordon’s web site goes to the trouble of pointing out to prospective claimants that they mustn’t ‘worry’ about having to go to court and swear to tell the truth because ’98% of cases don’t go to court’. Jordon’s are believed to have received an estimated £2 million of tax payers money to represent these spurious victims.

Noel turned to another retired teacher, who in turn put in a complaint regarding Jordon’s to the Solicitor’s Regulation Authority  who are doing whatever it is that they do behind firmly closed doors. We don’t know the result yet.

Still not finished. Noel took himself off to the Police – and demanded that they investigate some of the ‘vulnerable victims’ for fraud, perjury and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

The Police listened. As a result, three people involved in compensation claims have been arrested, and 17 more referred to the Legal Aid Commission. A small matter that only the local paper has cared to report.  Several of the suspects arrested under Operation Reno have already been informed that the Police do not intend to take any further action – their lives can return to peace and quiet.

It is a quite remarkable achievement for one man; a man with a dogged determination and the skills of a true investigator who was simply offended by the lies being told.

A man who had already shown himself to be a friend of the abused, since he was the person who reported the original and genuine abuse which resulted in the head master being jailed – despite being threatened with the sack for doing so.

I take my hat off to Noel Hartnett – and thank him for giving me the fillip I needed to boost my spirits.

Part of the material I am working on involves just such an allegation in the Savile saga that the claimant has committed fraud, perjury and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. The Police are investigating at the moment, so I cannot tell you more than that right now, but I too shall keep going.

Upwards and Onwards with renewed vigour.

I spoke yesterday of the vast volume of mail I am receiving, since starting to write of the Savile case. Some makes me angry beyond belief – and as if by magic, one such arrived overnight. The writer is known to me, so I can vouch for its authenticity – but she has asked me to refer to her as ‘S’, which I gladly so do. As you will see, she was hoping that I might use her story in a blog post – I wouldn’t dream of doing so, the e-mail is so powerfully written, so from the heart, so burning with the injustice and anguish of it all, that I reproduce it here as per the original, the only thing I have changed is her name.

This is what drives me on; this and the fact that my best friend at Duncroft was sexually abused by her family. We were close friends before we co-incidentally ended up at Duncroft, we remained friends afterwards. She died alone, from hypothermia – too addled by drink and drugs to remove herself to shelter and warmth – some 20 years later. She was never able to repair the damage within her family caused by her disclosing the abuse. It ate away at her, unmitigated by support from friends and specialists.

To all those who accuse me of being a ‘paedophile defender’ for my determination to put a stop to this endless media reality show – ‘the geriatric celebrity you once met can pay off your mortgage’ – I would say, read this and weep.

To all those fretting over which outfit to wear to the next television award ceremony – ‘dead celebrities I have denounced’ – read this and weep.

To all those journalists who say ‘it’s too time consuming to check out all these stories and I have a deadline to meet’ – read this and weep.

To all those pretendy celebrity policemen claiming to have investigated this Savile charade – read this and weep.

To all those charities busy raising untold millions for ‘supporting victims’ – read this and weep.

To all those lawyers raking in legal aid fees for acting on behalf of their confabulatory clients – read this and weep.

This is the sort of case your attention should have been turning to; there won’t be a PhD in it; nor promotion; nor will you build a career as a ‘child protection specialist’; you won’t get an award for your television programme; your charity won’t receive numerous new donations to spend on your wages; you won’t have the sort of story ‘any journalist would want’; you won’t get the ‘personal injury lawyer of the year award’; you won’t topple the BBC; nor even embarrass the coalition government.

But whilst you were all busy posturing, point scoring, portfolio building, pontificating and preening – one little country policeman was getting on with the real work.

***************************

Dear Anna,

I do hope you don’t mind me calling you Dear Anna but having read your blog for some years now I almost feel I know you.

This is a very quick message to personally thank you for all that you are doing to shed light on the whole Jimmy Savile crock of shite.

I have followed this story since it first broke (don’t panic, I’m not some attention seeking 50-year-old who may, or may not have had my bottom or breast touched by a minor celebrity 40 years ago).

2 years ago I started the long and arduous process of bringing my (long dead) Aunty’s partner to court for the horrific abuse he subjected myself and my cousins to. I did it on my own to start with; the other victims gave their accounts later (but haven’t spoken to me since). I still can’t decide which was harder, telling the police what he had done, or admitting that all the adults, My Mum, Her Sister, and all their friends knew what was going on, yet did nothing to protect us.

When I started my quest I hoped, in a way, that the others would come round, eventually. Sadly it is not to be. They were more concerned with keeping this monster’s secret (like our parents and friends were when it was happening to us) than stopping him from harming yet more children (he was a nature walker that took the local primary school kids on nature rambles) and that has saddened me beyond belief.

Anyhow, it took two years, and a very determined policeman; two days ago I got a phone call saying the monster had finally plead guilty to 7 counts , which include, amongst other things, rape and sodomy of his own daughter (She was aged 5 -10 years). He will be sentenced next month and the Judge has already stated a custodial sentence is the only option.

This monster destroyed my family all those years ago, and destroyed it again when I called him to account. But I don’t care. Had I not had the unending support of that one police officer I would have bailed long ago. He hunted down unwilling witnesses and dealt with my family (who were fit to see me tied). I’m sure what remains of my family will recover and repair in the years to come. But, even if we don’t, I will always know I did the right thing, and that is down to that one police officer. He will never be famous, he will simply go about his business, doing what he does best, which happens to be catching and nailing these monsters. When I spoke to him the other day, to thank him, he simply said ‘No worries, it’s my job, but remember, regardless of the shitty sentence the Judge hands down, the computer bods haven’t actually got around ‘sigh – rolls eyes’ to examining his computer yet, so who knows,in 6 months time we might be able to nail him for another couple of years’.

We also spoke briefly about the Jimmy Savile crap and he snorted. He said ‘Bunch of attention seeking fu*king arseholes’. I said ‘What about the police’, he replied ‘I was talking about them’ – Ouch! 

I asked if this recent rash of dead celebs touching the bottoms of nubile 15 yr olds, 40 years ago would affect my case and he laughed. 

He said ‘We have a cast-iron case of actual historic sexual abuse/sodomy/incest to which the actual perpetrator has admitted all and every crime. Any Judge that tries to brush this shit off with community service is either stupid or deaf, dumb and blind, fu*king stupid’.

He then stated that if the Judge turned out to actually be deaf, dumb and fu*king stupid he would back an appeal, with my consent, with a view to disclosing what ever horrors the tech chaps finally discover on the Monsters computer. 

It’s been a very long and sad and trying couple of years but I have absolute faith in my man in blue. Every time I have phoned he has either answered in person or returned my call within 12 hours. He has also visited me personally to divulge the most personal of information (from the other victims). I wish I could tell you his name but obviously, I can’t.

Sadly, as I stated before, since I decided to start this quest I have found myself alone. In the truest sense of the word. No one in my family will speak to me and oddly enough all the ‘Aunties and Uncles’ have fled the scene. And I won’t deny it, as I type this I am crying and sad beyond belief that everyone is more angry at me than they are at the fucking monster.

But I am lucky, because my boys (11 and 12) have supported me through all of this (yes, they do know the whole unvarnished truth) and they think I rock as a Mum. They reckon I should have a cape and sword and should make it my job to cut down all perverts, and their secret supporters (aka family and various Aunts and Uncles).

I am a very sad and very tired survivor ( I will not use the word victim) who has somehow managed to bring just one monster to justice , against the family’s wishes, and with nothing more than the help of a single police officer. You are more than welcome to post this message, in fact I hope you do. Edit as you see fit.

I would prefer it if you just labelled me S, as opposed to xxxxxxx, one time blogger of xxxxxx. Yes, it is me. You probably don’t remember me, I’m kind of hoping you may, but I had to give up the blogging when I started hunting down this monster. I would love it if you could, somehow, someway make a decent post out of my ramblings that would support those that are really going through the horrors of an actual, honest to God, historic sexual abuse case whilst being bombarded, every day, in the press by this fu*king Jimmy Savile, Jimmy Hall fu*king shite.

I cannot tell you how tired I am, tired and lonely but, thanks to that one police officer, I am a winner and the Streets and Sands of xxxxxx  xxxxxxxx, North Devon are finally, after 20 odd fu*king years, safe from one Peter xxxxxx. You’ll find him in the records for Portsmouth Crown Court. And it was down to little old me, not my cousins who were happy to let him wander round and enter every primary school, including the one that housed my niece. They were so desperate to keep his secret they were willing to allow him access to all the children in North Devon, including their own children.

S.

Edited to add: If anyone feels like sending a message of support and friendship to ‘S’, then e-mail me at annaraccoon2010@gmail.com, and I will gladly forward them on to her. I would imagine that whether you get a reply or not will depend on whether she feels like setting up an anonymous e-mail address, I shall leave that up to her.

More redactions made at 13.32 on the 13th july to ensure that one policeman actually doing his job doesn’t get into trouble for doing so – thanks to ‘Fedup’ in the comments for pointing this out to me. Most unfair that the likes of Mark Williams-Twat can spin whatever crap they like, but a decent copper like this one, could conceivably get into trouble.

Before I started writing this, I played a segment of ‘Exposure’ back to myself. Within the first few minutes I was listening to yet another lie – the story of ‘Sarah’ allegedly portrayed by an actress both on screen and in voice – because ‘none of her family knew what had happened to her’. Yet Sarah was none other than the sister of one of the original Duncroft girls; we know that because her sister told Alison Levitt QC all about her ‘and what happened to her’. Jimmy Savile allegedly kissed her! Can I not listen to five minutes of that blasted programme without uncovering another manipulation of the truth?

One of the most damning pieces of what has laughingly been referred to as ‘evidence’ in the wake of the ‘Exposure’ programme was Jimmy’s great-niece, Caroline Robinson (left), appearing on ‘This Morning’ to claim that her ‘Great Uncle Jimmy’ had abused her too, not once but twice. This allegation has been leapt upon by the armchair moralisers who are quite, quite sure that they know the truth of the matter from a few snippets of erroneous newspaper reporting, as being the ‘last piece in the jigsaw’ – “See, even his own niece, just shows you what a monster he was”.

Yet emerging evidence suggests strongly that tabloid misrepresentations of Jimmy Savile’s sex abuse ‘exploits’ are holding up the release of money he left in his Will to genuinely deserving charities. While the main stream media try to suggest that ‘Savile family avarice’ is behind the delay, in fact only one publicity hungry maverick within the family has occasioned this specific problem.

It enrages me as I watch history being rewritten, judicial protections being undercut, as the ‘Savile bandwagon’ rolls over his reputation courtesy of a media which now claims to ‘have known all along’ – except that they had no proof; at the hands of middle aged women who have lived life roughly and now seek redress for their choices; all aided and abetted by a charity industry that seeks an ever larger remit for their empire; and a police force desperate to maintain their numbers and remuneration in the face of falling ‘recorded’ crime figures. Figures which managed to fall notwithstanding the helpful addition of hundreds of ‘recorded crimes’ being chalked up in the wake of the Savile debacle!

The millions that the charities have at their disposal to help those blighted by child abuse are being dissipated. The watchful eye of parents turned outwards, away from the ‘uncles’ in their midst that are the real danger to children. Charities such as Help the Heroes – and ironically, a Northern Charity which gives practical help and support to those who suffer domestic and child abuse, have been told that there is likely to be nothing left for them to help the legless serviceman and scarred children that Savile intended his riches to go to.

The lawyers clutch their interim accounts and look forward to the final remit. Those middle aged women – the ‘vulnerable victims’ – may, if they are lucky, receive a thousand or so for a stolen kiss – but the lawyers will receive millions.

I always try to put myself in ‘both’ pairs of shoes. I have tried and, I confess, failed, to imagine what it must be like to wake up one morning and find that your Mother’s memorial stone is gleefully displayed on the front page of the Sun, smashed and discarded in the bottom of a skip, with the world at large whooping triumphantly. That is what happens when your Mother was related to Jimmy Savile and they shared a memorial stone.

These are not the only indignities that have been heaped on the near 50 people who have familial ties to Jimmy Savile. Quite right too, some would say, aren’t they related to that evil pervert? The sins of the Uncle etc., etc.,?

I have spoken at length to those related to Jimmy Savile; apparently one of the few people to give them a thought. They, of course, are not only related to Jimmy Savile – but, inevitably, to Caroline Robinson, as she is now. They have known her since she was a baby; they know the family history intimately – not through newspaper clippings.

They were not, as I imagined, a family “in blanket denial”; standing together saying “Our Jimmy wouldn’t do anything like that”.

They are a family baffled. Baffled as so many of us are, by the lack of evidence. They would like to know the truth.

And utterly incensed by the blatant lies that have emerged in what little evidence has been seen outside the hallowed corridors of Operation Yewtree.

And rendered speechless by, or at least refusing to speak to, the media who have jumped on the bandwagon with such lack of caution, sensitivity and investigation.

There are a large number of relatives. Marjory, Savile’s sister gave birth to seventeen children, 11 are still alive. They in turn gave birth to 31 children of their own.

When Caroline emerged from the shadows to say that Jimmy had abused her when she was 12, they were all on the phone to each other. “How could that be” they said, “How old was she at Vincent’s funeral”? “That was 2003” said another, “or thereabouts, she must have been near 40”. “Well, she told me that was the first time she’d met him”, “Me too” cried another, “I remember that”.

“What’s all this about him buying Marjory a house In Egypt”? “Marjory never owned a house in her life”. One of them had seen a photograph of this alleged house in Egypt. “Sort of square, and white, looks very ordinary”. ‘Not got an orange tree in front of it has it?” the others cried in unison. They all remembered the square white house with the orange tree in front of it – not owned by Marjory, in Egypt, but rented in Libya, where Caroline’s Mother, June, had sweated though the Libyan summer in RAF married quarters when she was married to her husband Nick. June had been very proud of the orange tree – one of those silly details that family members remember.

Why did Caroline feel it necessary to claim that Jimmy had bought a house for Marjory as ‘hush money’? Perhaps she felt it made her tale more credible – but it enraged a family who not only knew that Marjory had never had a house – in Egypt, Timbuktu, or anywhere else – but who held Marjory in great esteem and respect. 

Marjory never owned property – that was why Jimmy Savile bought a caravan in Gorse Hill, Conwy. As he had started to make money, whereas I am told he paid up the mortgage of Chrissie and Joan,  Marjory didn’t own a house, so he bought the caravan for her use instead. It is a matter of record.

Josephine had a house nearby, one that Caroline had visited many times. Of all the family, she is the one most hurt by Caroline’s allegations. She was very close to her, used to enjoy her visits to Llandudno. She was aware that Caroline had had a difficult childhood. As the other family members started to say ‘Why now, why would she say something now and not before,” Josephine wondered more than anyone, for it was not as though Caroline was a stranger to the process of revealing childhood abuse – just not abuse at Uncle Jimmy’s hands.

Caroline’s previous claims. 

When she was 14, she claimed that another relative had abused her whilst she was baby sitting for him – this allegation wasn’t general knowledge to all the family until very recently and needless to say, the alleged perpetrator adamantly denies it. We can’t know the truth of that, but certainly even that was not the first allegation that Caroline had felt brave enough to make.

When Marjory and her husband Bert finally separated, Bert went to live with his daughter June - Caroline’s Mother. Hey ho! There were dark suggestions from June that Caroline had told her that ‘Bert was interfering with his grand daughter’, and she needed him to move out of the house.  Again we can never know the truth of this; all it does show is that Caroline was no stranger to speaking out about alleged abuse.

Could it be that she was never believed on these occasions, except by her Mother? That is possible, although one would imagine that knowing her history, her Mother would have been only too keen to keep a close eye on her daughter and who was around her. But there’s a thing! Caroline alleges that Jimmy abused her yet again, at her ‘engagement party’ too – 15 might seem a tad young for an engagement party, but Caroline was pregnant!

Now even Caroline’s own brothers don’t remember this engagement party, still less Uncle Jimmy turning up and running a disco. As they have pointed out – Uncle Jimmy arriving in a suburban side street outside this nondescript flat roofed council house in his Gold Rolls Royce would have generated a crowd of every youngster in the area – and their parents – with their noses pressed to the windows hoping to catch a glimpse of Jimmy. So they were even more puzzled, I am told, when their Mother explained away this ‘forgetfulness’ on their part by saying “You were outside playing football”. Outside playing football in a street packed with gawkers at this unexpected celebrity in their midst for their sister getting engaged? Curiouser and curiouser.

So, there is Caroline, pregnant at 15, and no one is perturbed at this obvious sexual abuse on the part of ‘someone’ – but 40 years later, Caroline and her Mother are sufficiently outraged by the alleged wandering hands of her Uncle to be consulting lawyers and demanding compensation?

Caroline lost that baby, and the details and lies surrounding this are another kettle of fish. Needless to say, the rest of the family are not supportive of her latest allegations regarding Uncle Jimmy to the point that many family members have given official statements to the police – but more on that later.

The letter that created a family rift.

One of the reasons that the family were so disbelieving of these claims, was not a blind defence of Jimmy, but simply that they knew that Jimmy had never forgiven Caroline’s Mother June for a letter she had written to his beloved Mother, the ‘Duchess’, many years earlier. A letter which had so wounded him that it was the only item of personal correspondence that he had kept in his Scarborough home. A letter that ensured that although Jimmy took care of his family financially in that typically close knit Leeds manner – June’s home was one he simply didn’t visit.

He wasn’t a forgiving man.

This is what the letter said:

Dear Grandma!

I don’t suppose for one minute you know who I am, or that you care.  Anyway, I am one of Marjory’s daughters.

Every time you write to my mother you upset her.  You say she must come and see you alone. We all know you have no time for any of us unless you want something – you are just like Jimmy – he won’t do anything unless he gets paid for the publicity. 

You don’t seem to object to Chrissie or her cronies seeing you – its about time you realised you have a daughter and son-in-law and grandchildren and great grandchildren and a grave in Killingbeck Cemetery that looks like a rubbish tip.  It would do you the world of good to visit the cemetery one day instead of tripping off everywhere else.  Tell Jimmy if he comes to see his father’s grave, I will make sure there are plenty of press men there.

You didn’t even send my mother a Christmas card just because you had the flu is about the feeblest excuses I have ever heard.

You should have written to my Mother inviting her to your birthday party instead of writing to Joan, after all my Mother is the oldest daughter near to hand.

Chrissie and the rest of them seem to get things out of you so why don’t you send a little something to my mother.  Don’t think this begging for her because this not and she has no idea I’m writing to you but I do think under the circumstances a small gift would mean the word to her.  Just now my father is very ill and its difficult for my mother to make ends meet.  I help her all I can but with a family of my own to look after, its a bit difficult.

She was upset at Christmas because it was the anniversary of my son’s death but she was also upset because there was no greetings from you.

If you cannot write to her a decent letter that we can all read and enjoy without feeling contempt for you and your high and mighty ways (though god knows where to get them from) then don’t bother writing to her at all.

If this letter makes you angry enough to give you a conscience them I’m glad, but god help you if you write to my mother and upset her again.

If you answer this letter to me it should make interesting reading.

Yours June Perry (signed)

Grand-daughter

That letter was written on New Years Day 1969. Jimmy was used to getting letters that asked for money. It is an occupational hazard for anyone from a working class family who ‘makes it’. There is a particular viciousness, jealously and bitterness about that letter that rankled with Jimmy. He kept the letter long after his Mother had died – right up to his own death.

Yet Caroline would have you believe that six years after that letter he was giving his time to host a disco in honour of her engagement at 15!

All of this would make sense if there was money at stake; a family sticking together in the face of adverse publicity – and they are sticking together, all 40 odd of them (I confess, I have lost count for the moment).

Only June, Caroline’s Mother, writer of that letter, and Caroline’s present husband support her version of events.

Not whether Uncle Jimmy ever touched her inappropriately – they are wise enough to know that no one can pronounce comprehensively as to what goes on between two people, especially when one of them is not around to put their side of the story – but whether Caroline even met Jimmy before 2003 when she would have been 40! 

Follow the money!

The money which is at stake is NOT their money. Only two members of the family have any financial interest in the will, and they only have what is termed a ‘life interest’ in a modest amount – after their death, that money will join the millions intended for the charities that are supported in Savile’s will – and that is what the family support too. A personal interest in money is not the reason they are contesting Caroline’s version of events – contesting to the point of making statements to the police.

They are puzzled by Caroline’s abrupt about turn when the details of Jimmy’s will were known.

When Jimmy died, another niece, his next of kin, was first to be informed at 11.20am by his Cardiologist, Alistair Hall, that he had passed away. She spent the rest of the day in Jimmy’s apartment, liaising with the police and undertakers. The Police advised her to leave the phone on voicemail.  Caroline was one of those who telephoned the apartment, which was already filling with relatives – a call that created comment at the time, and was dutifully recorded on the voicemail. Those present were aware that Caroline hardly knew him and yet -

Quote: “She was crying and wailing “Please, Please Uncle Jimmy, Please answer the phone, Please tell me it isn’t true, Please, please, please, Oh god Uncle Jimmy, please tell me it isn’t true”.  Amanda couldn’t believe this reaction from someone who knew him so little, but “was obviously very upset that he had died.” That niece was one of those who had met Caroline for the first time at Vincent Savile’s funeral where Caroline had confided that it was the “first time she had met Jimmy”.

Vincent Savile died in November 2003!

Later, Caroline elected to take up a Bingo prize she had won, and go on holiday, missing Jimmy’s funeral. Then she sent a florid tribute to sit on his grave – a personalised green plastic vase bearing the legend “In loving memory of …………. love from your Great Niece Caroline and David Robinson”.

The next the family heard was in the Daily Mail – quickly followed by Caroline sitting on the breakfast TV sofas, loudly proclaiming that Jimmy had abused her – and they were advised that she was represented by the personal injury lawyer Liz Dux.

Caroline was accused by relatives on Facebook of lying and brother Martin Perry told her: “You are not right in the head. You have brought shame on all the Marsdens by lying, there will be a nice long line of people wanting to smack you. Never again will I think I have a sister.”

Jane Perry, married to Caroline’s other brother Philip, wrote: “What a load of b*******”.

Louise Perry, her niece, said: “No one in the family has a clue what you are on about. For you to paint such an awful picture of the family is beyond my belief.”

The legal outcome?

That meant that the executors of Savile’s will – the Nat West Bank, couldn’t pay his legacies to any of the charities, and had to take legal advice as to possible liability. Very expensive legal advice.

The family have made statements to the police – but it may shock you to learn, that there is little the police can do about what the family consider to be a fraudulent claim against the Savile estate. In law, it is only a fraudulent claim if there was no abuse. In order to establish whether there was abuse, an investigation would have to be carried out into Savile’s relationship with Caroline – but Savile is not alive to interview.

That small detail hasn’t prevented the police from naming Savile as a paedophile – the weight of numbers, the sheer volume of people who have come forward claiming to have been abused by him apparently ‘lends credence’ to the claims.

Yet the sheer volume of relatives of Caroline coming forward, including her own children and those who were in the past deeply fond of her, to say that this is all nonsense, she didn’t meet him until 2003, doesn’t have the same effect – and of course the effect of Savile’s own great-niece claiming to have been abused by him lends credence to everyone else’s claims.

The Trustees of Savile’s estate are in a difficult position.  The fundamental core of trusteeship is to act in good faith and in the best interests of the beneficiaries. They must mitigate losses where they can. If that means reaching a financial settlement with Caroline’s lawyers rather than going to court, and risk wiping out the entire estate in legal costs, then that they must do.

You can only begin to imagine how the family feel at the thought of that Child Abuse charity in the north of England being starved of their expected inheritance in favour of paying the personal injury lawyers their ‘enhanced fees’ for acting on behalf of Caroline. 

Meanwhile, they continue to field phone calls from journalists asking whether it is true that they are ‘holding up payments to vulnerable victims of Britain’s most prolific paedophile in order to protect their inheritance’.

They don’t have ‘an inheritance’, and the media seem determined that they shouldn’t even have any dignified memories of a relative they were intensely proud of.

Still, the story has sold lots of newspapers for a dying media industry, so it can’t be all bad – can it?

Today, the lord chief justice, Lord Judge, sitting with Justice Rafferty and Justice Macur, will decide whether the 15-month jail term that Stuart Hall received after pleading guilty to 14 counts of indecent assault, on girls as young as nine which includes one girl who was nine at the time.

The armchair moralisers who form their views from forums and newspaper accounts will learn whether three eminent judges, examining the actual evidence, agree with the term set by Preston crown court recorder, Judge Anthony Russell QC.

If Stuart Hal’s sentence is not increased, I confidently expect an outcry from the witch hunt followers. They will not be satisfied with mere justice – revenge is what they want.

There has been much speculation as to why Stuart Hall decided to plead guilty. The simplistic answer is because he WAS guilty. Others have pointed out that he was 83 years of age, in poor health, and possibly didn’t feel like spending his remaining days with such an odorous charge hanging over his head.

I, as is my contrarian way, have been pondering other reasons why a man should plead guilty. Let me tell you the sad tale of ‘Brendan’ as I shall call him, his sister ‘Sháuna’ and his little niece ‘Caitlin’. (I have given them false names for obvious reasons).

Brendan was the youngest of a large and dysfunctional Irish family. None too bright at the best of times, he has had treatment for various mental health issues over the years. Now aged 41, he copes with his life by drinking heavily, and living with his sister Sháuna. It is not hard to imagine that he may be a pain in the neck as a permanent house guest.

Caitlin, his little niece, complained to the Gardai via her Mother that ‘Uncle Brendan’ was a lot more than just a pain in the neck to have around the house – he had raped her when she was 10 years old on a date between 1 September 2004 and 28 February 2005.

That left Brendan with six drink-befuddled months to try to defend himself over. ‘Someone’ in the family said he would be a lot better off pleading guilty and throwing himself on the mercy of the court rather than trying to account for himself over every minute of six months.

“I knew there were days I could not account for as I had been drinking so much. My memory was never good; it’s almost non-existent now,” the man said.

Since Brendan was ‘overcome by panic’ and in a state of near nervous collapse at the thought of going to prison, he agreed to plead guilty. He began the long process of waiting for trial as a self confessed guilty paedophile. 

Then a curious thing happened.

His sister, Sháuna, wrote to the Gardai and admitted that she had made her young daughter make these allegations. She said this was done because she suffered from depression and anorexia and wanted her brother out of the house.

“I told her a lot of stuff to say, to blame him and what kind of things he did. It took a lot of time to get her to understand, she didn’t want to do it.”

Ms Justice Iseult O’Malley has granted the man’s application to change his plea, and adjourned the case for mention.

She remanded the man on unconditional bail, removed him from the sex offender’s register and excused him from attending court on the next date.

Brendan is incontrovertibly innocent of the charge of rape and paedophilia – this is the first time I have heard any explanation as to why a man would plead guilty to such a charge – but how do you defend yourself on a rape charge ‘sometime between 2004 and 2005′ on someone you share a house with? If, for reasons of age or alcohol abuse, your memory is not as it should be, it is an impossible task – better to plead guilty and pray for leniency.

Strange how the main stream media aren’t so keen to publicise these cases, isn’t it?

Remember that when you consider the reasons why 83 year old Stuart Hall may have pleaded guilty.

What arrant nonsense have the hacks that write our Tabloids ‘Penny Dreadfuls’ come up with now? What balderdash-on-stilts is served today?

When the Sunday Pictorial was launched in 1915, Lord Rothermere said that the idea was to strike a balance between socially responsible reporting of great issues of the day and sheer entertainment; as the Pictorial morphed into The Sunday Mirror in 1962 it was said to still adhere to those values.

Just before it became The Sunday Mirror, the Pictorial ran a series of articles on matters it considered of ‘social importance’. A three-part series on ‘Evil men‘.

“Most people know there are such things – ‘pansies’ – mincing, effeminate, young men who call themselves queers (…) but simple decent folk regard them as freaks and rarities.”

They compared homosexuality to a ‘spreading fungus’ that had contaminated ‘generals, admirals, fighter pilots, engine drivers and boxers’. Later, they issued a ”How to Spot a Homo” guide which listed ‘shifty glances’, ‘dropped eyes’ and ‘a fondness for the theatre’ as signs of being gay and thus ‘evil’.

Today, in 2013, they have a new definition of ‘Evil men’. No longer mincing and effeminate, nor attracted to young men, the new ‘evil man’ is a healthy – preferably white – heterosexual male, attracted to young women, but still to be considered by ‘simple decent folk’ as a freak and not-so-rarity.

15 years ago, in the US, the writers of the comedy show, South Park, penned an episode that was considered so outrageous and impossible, it could only be comedic. In an act of revenge against what they saw as unfair criticism, two journalists invented a creature they called the legendary ‘Mexican Staring Frog of Southern Sri Lanka’. Falling ratings had caused the fictitious show to lose its appeal and so it is turned into ‘Trash TV’. Claims of Satanic worship, and the ability of the mythical Frog to wreak havoc in peoples lives with the merest glance, abound.

The parallels with the saga of Jimmy Savile and the desire of the hacks in the dead tree press to portray his staring eyes at every opportunity and illustrate the most tenuous link to his name with hyperbolic repetition from the lexicon of conspiracy theory is unmistakable. The producer responsible for airing the Mexican Staring Frog saga ended up in Hell with only Saddam Hussein for company when it was discovered that there was no truth to their claims – we can but hope that a similar fate awaits the journalists behind the balderdash that is served up to us today masquerading as ‘News’. We have only ourselves to blame – we pay their wages. Every copy of a newspaper that we purchase reaffirms to them that we would rather read childish fairy tales than the truth.

Yesterday, the Sunday Mirror excelled itself in its drive to horrify ‘simple decent folk’. They had, they claimed, a world exclusive – they had discovered ‘Jimmy Savile’s secret lair‘. The secret HQ where he planned his ‘vile acts’. The piece was illustrated with a picture of the Mexican Staring Frog ’the Beast at the height of his career and depravity’.

Acting on a tip-off, specialist highly trained forensic officers descended on a room above a record shop in Manchester and ‘stripped the wallpaper from the walls’. (No doubt many a police wife will be thrilled to learn that the police are trained in such humble arts….) and then chipped the plaster off revealing names scrawled on the underside of the walls.  A senior criminologist from Birmingham University (actually David Wilson who is supervising Mark Williams-Thomas’ doctorate in how to libel the dead how to make a career out of a dead celebrity or some-such) was brought in to explain that before ‘the internet’ this was how ‘paedophiles would communicate with one another’ – by writing on a wall and then covering their words with plaster and wallpaper! Only another paedophile presumably, could read the secret list thus concealed. GCHQ have a lot to learn.

This Manchester wall was ‘like something out of a horror movie’ scrawled with names of girls and comments regarding their sexual ability. ‘Kyle is a right little slag’ interspersed with ‘Kilroy was here’ and the ominous and foreboding ‘Beware of limbo dancers’ written at the bottom of a door. Obviously code for yet more depravity. Police will now be sent out in squads to attempt to trace every Kyle in the Manchester area to find out her precise age at the time of writing. I just hope they don’t waste too much time trying to arrest that well known paedophile Kilroy. The limbo dancer got him, years ago.

As is the way of these prosaic set-pieces on ‘Savile the beast’, Ben Glaze, the journalist concerned, went on to list every ‘enough to make you shiver in your shoes’ erroneous fact he could think of to pad out his article – for had not his source told him that “the raid had provided the clearest evidence yet to show Savile was part of a larger group of monsters”.

In 1964, Savile’s name was mentioned to police investigating allegations that men were exploiting girls from Duncroft ­Approved School in Surrey.

Police arrested two men in London and a ledger showed Savile was a regular ­visitor there.

No, Ben! Nice try. But not factual. Two men were arrested in London in 1964 for living off immoral earnings. The prostitutes working for them had previously attended Duncroft. Not quite the same as the impression you were trying to convey. Jimmy Savile was believed to have visited the home address of one of those men, who was also in the music business. No evidence that the girls were working from that address – and highly unlikely. No suggestion that Savile ever met the girls, nor that he visited that man in connection with girls, prostitution, or any other depravity. No suggestion that ‘Savile was a regular visitor’ to that house or Duncroft, and he certainly, definitely, never visited Duncroft in 1964. You just couldn’t help yourself, could you Ben?

Savile was stripped of his knighthood when dozens of women came forward to say he attacked them during his 54-year campaign of abuse.

No he wasn’t Ben! Knighthoods expire with the holders death. Nobody stripped him of it. Only death.

I sometimes wonder if that well known ex-journalist David Icke hasn’t been cloned and installed in the features department of every tabloid. Why single out the tabloids? The so-called ‘quality Sundays’ are just as bad. Speaking of David Icke, the slavering commentators on his site were in full spate following this article. They gleefully imagined ‘hundreds of innocent young victims’ ‘quivering with terror’ as they scrawled their names on this wall, moments before they were gruesomely raped. They could see, they could feel, their taut little faces, white with terror, tears welling in their sad eyes as elderly celebrities advanced on them with priapic precision. They could imagine the handcuffs bolted to the wall, the whips and flagellators lying abandoned in the murky gloom – if that site isn’t principally contributed to by salivating paedophiles delighting in the opportunity to discuss the finer details – I’m a Dutchman.

Unfortunately, for Ben Glaze, his ‘source’ who presumably had a hot line to that expert on paedophile communication David Wilson, (no-o-o, you don’t think so do you? Well, it had crossed my mind too…) and the excited denizens of David Icke’s site, within hours the magic conspiracy carpet on which they were all flying was pulled from under their feet. So much hyperbole was too much even for Scotland Yard; they issued a statement. Detective Chief Superintendent Mary Doyle said:

‘Last year, Greater Manchester Police received allegations about historic sexual abuse that occurred in the Greater Manchester area. These allegations were made as a result of Operation Yewtree, which was the investigation by the Metropolitan Police into Jimmy Savile.

‘It is important to stress these allegations were not about Jimmy Savile himself and GMP is not carrying out any inquiries directly relating to Savile’.

Not Savile’s lair, his HQ, from which he and his accomplices spread out across Britain to entrap five year olds into a life of misery after all! Never mind folks, another tabloid will be feeding your desires come next week…it’s the only thing paying their wages right now.

Now, it is far too hot here, 38 degrees yet again, and Ms Raccoon is off to spend the day in some cold water. Try not to put me in a bad mood by coming up with more nonsense like this. Once a day is quite enough in this weather.

You see them everywhere, representatives of the NSPCC. You hear them on the adverts during afternoon TV; they are on the breakfast sofa’s opining on the latest ‘terrible outrage’; they are in the side bar advertisements in your newspaper; and for sure you will have met some in your local High Street. Heavens! One of them even lived directly underneath Jimmy Savile’s apartment in Scarborough.

But have you noticed something? Every time you’ve seen one they’ve either been holding their hand out telling you that ‘but for your £2 a week’ some poor child would likely be dead by now, or ‘how disgusted they are’ that ‘x’, ‘y’ or ‘z’ received what was in their opinion was a derisory prison sentence for child abuse.

The NSPCC are superb fund raisers, exceptionally well organised. They work closely to the formula devised by the doyen of charitable fund raising, Marion Alford. A veritable army of supervisors and volunteers fan out across the country with military precision and tactics. They have analysed every step of the process, from suitable ‘rewards’ for different levels of donation to the necessity of inveigling large private donations before a campaign even starts in order that press releases can go out within a few days expressing surprise ‘at the large amount already donated’.

The NSPCC adopted this strategy on an ongoing basis.  It has a basic triad of topics that have to be constantly re-presented to capture media interest and successful fundraising.  Physical abuse (now with domestic violence) – sexual abuse  (now with street grooming) – and  neglect  (this – the largest category of need has always been the Cinderella of fundraising because it involves the poor and the feckless and generally lacks salacious intensity, though the very rare Munchhauson’s Syndrome by Proxy and ‘emotional abuse’ were vamped up to compensate).

In order to pursue their fundraising aims the NSPCC need victims.  Of course these are two a penny but you need a special type of victim to generate success with these being promoted as being ‘the tip of the iceberg’. The iceberg comprises the thousands of young children ‘trapped in silence’ who are to be presumed, but are necessary to generate the emotive appeal for funds.  The public victims are ‘adult survivors’ of gross hidden ‘scandals’ whose stories are circulated in the media.

Their last big fund raising initiative – the Full Stop campaign – raised a stomping £250 million, but what did they do with it? Of course fund raising on this scale, using the professional services of companies such as MAA is an expensive business, and then there are the headline grabbing celebrities to be recompensed for their time. There are the advertising companies to be paid, and public relations specialists, even the humble social media experts pushing out their message on Twitter. Only the occasional can-rattler is genuinely a volunteer – and then not always.

Their skill at public relations has been honed by the best and most expensive advice over the years into an art form.

But where is the child protection? You’ve seen all the people above, heard them, witnessed their hard work, but tell me – when did you last see an NSPCC Inspector? You know where to send your donation – but do you know who to call if you come across a child in danger? Where do these elusive child protection workers hang out? What is their phone number? My guess is that you’d probably call the local Social Services outfit or the police. Which begs the question – what is the NSPCC actually doing with your money?

Which child has been protected with your £2 a week? We hear about the children that have been failed – the NSPCC bag a seat on the breakfast sofas faster than a German with a beach towel – ever ready to criticise social services. We hear what they think of derisory prison sentences. We know which head they think should roll. They are quite capable of using suitably anonymised children to plead for more money – where are the suitably anonymised children who have been ‘saved’?

The current pre-occupation with punishing child abusers – and it is in full spate this morning following the sentencing of Daniel Pelka’s parents for his murder – ignores the bariatricly challenged elephant in the room. In order to punish a perpetrator, first a child must be abused. The entire emphasis is on shutting the stable door and pouring opprobrium on the departing horses head. That may please the mob – and if they are lucky they will claim the scalp of a Director of Social Services, yet again, no doubt to be followed by an expensive claim for unfair dismissal – but somewhere, in Britain, another child is raiding the dustbin. Who is there for them? Where were the NSPCC inspectors when Daniel’s teachers were looking for advice on his bruises?

We are told that it was hard for the Polish speaking Daniel to tell teachers of his hunger. What a curious country we are! We can send out gas bills in Welsh perchance someone prefers to read it that way, we can provide on line translators to tell a Swahili mother to ‘push’ in the last irresistible stages of labour – yet a little Polish boy has no one to help him mouth the words ‘I’m starving’?

Take another look at that picture of Daniel. That is not the wan pathetic face of Baby ‘P’. That is a picture of a little boy that could have graced any press release telling of the success of nursery education. Smartly dressed, clean and well fed, enjoying his game with Playdo. Yet within months, something happened. That little boy turned into a skeletal figure weighing the same as a one year old child. His school clothes were ‘hanging off him’. His arm was broken. His face was bruised. The description is a dramatic difference from that picture – and people did notice the difference…

Social Services will no doubt plead ‘government cuts’, staff shortages – and they are probably right. They are the people who actually do the work. They are woefully short of man power. The £250 million war chest of the NSPCC would pay a lot of wages. Wages for men and women who would fan out across the country, not to beg for donations on commission – but to be a constant presence that can be talked to when a child deteriorates like that. Someone teachers, neighbours – and the child – know well; trust and like; a familiar face. Not a voice at the end of a helpline.

We can take the money off pensioners to pay for banking losses; why can’t we take the £250 million off the NSPCC to pay for child protectors? That, after all, is what it was donated for.

I am sick to death of hearing ‘who should be held accountable’. Sick to death of public inquiries and ‘lessons learned’. Sick to death of hearing of abusers who should be ‘shafted in the prison showers’. Sick to death of the moral posturing of ‘almost qualified’ criminologists and would-be tv celebrities. Sick to death of awards for exposing hands on bums 40 years ago. Sick to death of hearing of the millions being set aside to compensate middle aged women who snatched a kiss from a long dead celebrity.

I want to see all that energy, all those millions, channelled into providing a friendly face always on call to befriend a lonely little Polish boy who hasn’t eaten for days – before he becomes a statistic. It’s not rocket science. It’s child protection.