Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.£20 million down, £80 million to get through, Alexis Jay’s ‘loyal staff’ audition for the role of legal advisor…
You put your left boot in
You take your left boot out
You do a lot of shouting
And you shake your fist about
You light a little rumour
And you scuttle out of town
That’s what it’s all about.
Ms Raccoon has endured another night in the unpleasant surroundings of our local accident and emergency unit. In the time between when I left home and the highly regulated ‘time within which patients are seen’ (only starts counting when you are taken out of the ambulance) and returned to their own comfy bed – around 12 hours in total – I was several moves behind time on the #CSA inquiry. The NHS may be the envy of the world, but it doesn’t move fast enough to keep a blogger up to speed on IICSA…
On Wednesday, Sean O’ Neill in the Times announced that Ben Emmerson QC was ‘poised to resign’ from the £100 million Jay Inquiry into child abuse.
Somebody fed him that story.
The following day, somebody from the Inquiry team refuted that story.
Suggestions in the press that Mr Emmerson was considering resigning after raising disagreements over the future direction of the Inquiry are untrue. They are not a matter on which he has advised the Chair or Panel.
They went on to airly suggest that in fact Mr Emmerson, far from honourably resigning, had been suspended from his position as chief legal advisor.
The Inquiry has recently become very concerned about aspects of Mr Emmerson’s leadership of the Counsel Team. He has therefore been suspended from duty so that these can be properly investigated.
That press release was unsigned. It also proved to be the first Mr Emmerson knew of any suspension. He quickly responded with a statement from his own solicitors: Bindmans.
Bindmans LLP are instructed by Ben Emmerson QC, read statement below: pic.twitter.com/8mKoLyHALM
— Bindmans LLP (@BindmansLLP) September 28, 2016
We had only got to 11pm….
Bright and early the next morning, Thursday, we had a ‘first person’ press release, unsigned but almost certainly from Alexis Jay herself, accepting Ben Emmerson’s resignation, with no mention of any suspension, and wishing him well.
There is no truth in suggestions that he has resigned due to a difference of opinion with me about the next steps for the Inquiry.
This was linked to a copy of Mr Emmerson’s resignation letter dated 29th September – Thursday Morning…
Then it emerged that Elizabeth Prochaska, the inquiry’s junior counsel, had resigned on September 15th, a fortnight earlier. She follows in the footsteps of Hugh Davies, QC who quit back in December last year; and a triplicate of senior judges who have preferred to spend more time with their family…
Now Ben Emmerson, who is said to have a ‘forceful and abrasive’ personality, as befits a highly successful counsel who has cut his teeth on the finest opponents in legal la la land, is known to prefer a formal evidence based approach to giving formal recognition to ‘survivors’ stories. Fact checking, querying whether the Archbishop of Canterbury really did ride into view on a Unicorn whilst Ted Heath castrated you in the forest. Boring old fashioned stuff like that.
Whereas Alexis Jay, from her social work background would like to see a ‘greater role for forums, focus groups and expert seminars’, that can give survivors the ‘closure’ that comes from ‘being believed’ without any nasty ‘triggering’ that could arise from a ‘forceful and abrasive’ barrister who might have the temerity to ‘put to you’ that unicorns don’t actually exist.
To sum up – in the past 24 hours, we now have a £100 million pounds allocated to an inquiry devoid of judges, and minus some of the best legal brains in the country, firmly in the hands of the social worker Alexis Jay, and an inept crew who believe that victims are ‘stake-holders’ (steak-knife holders would be more appropriate for some of them) who can be persuaded to down their social media weapons and abide by a ‘code of conduct’ when put in the same room and plied with prawn sarnies.
A ‘code of conduct’ may work very well with the shiny suited and gell haired officers of ‘renewable obligations’ – they can generally be trusted not to pull each others pigtails, nor plaster the internet with snatched images of other participants, nor issue threats to their hated adversaries, nor ‘borrow’ details of whatever they have heard in that room, nor score points by revealing who was present and who wasn’t…nor have a group of banner waving ‘supporters’ waiting outside the building.
But the so called ‘survivors’ of ‘VIP’ abuse and ‘Satanic’ abuse? All together in real time with a pile of prawn sandwiches?
The Jay Inquiry. Otherwise known as the world’s most expensive group therapy session.
Who will be next to flee the foetid fiefdom?
- Ajay
September 30, 2016 at 10:00 am Thanks for your usual spot on summing up of this charade Anna. I continue to marvel at your ability to pen these great blogs when life is so tough for you.
- The Blocked Dwarf
September 30, 2016 at 10:33 am and I wish you and the Panel the very best of luck with the task ahead.– Emmerson
I would dearly like to see the rough draft of his resignation letter cos to my simple dwarvish mind there was, in the original, the suffix ” because only sheer dumb luck can save you now”.More importantly however is the fact you were back in A&E :(, Inquiry Chairs may come and go but there is only one Anna Raccoon.
- Ho Hum
September 30, 2016 at 10:38 am Interesting analysis, Anna, and as a acerbic as ever!
If it’s as bad as you suggest it might be, where are they going to look for a legal advisor whose lack of professional understanding, ability, and pride, will let them take on a role that might so denigrate the law, legal process, and even justice itself. Might even be cheaper too
They’ll need to find someone with a wallfull of certificates, and a few hundred letters after their name, with maybe with a title thrown in too, to convince the public they’ve got that right. Maybe you could give them a few clues as to where to start looking….
Meantime, trust you are over your own last episode now, and that your medical advisors are tending to you well. As, undoubtedly, is Mr G, for whom our admiration has no bounds
- Anne
September 30, 2016 at 11:58 am If they find someone with letters after their name they will be accused of being a member of the ‘establishment’!
- Anne
- Jonathan King
September 30, 2016 at 11:06 am Brilliant – but the question arises – why only you? Why does our intrepid media not reveal this is all because of the False Allegations Industry? Why must pointing out the obvious – that false accusers exist – as Gambo, Cliff, Tarby, Jim, Freddie and hundreds will attest on oath – be so frightening to the media? When top highly paid professionals discover this, one after the other, and discreetly fall on their swords, why doesn’t media reveal the truth? And when will May, Rudd and the others act? Because, let’s face it, it is a great story.
- Peb
September 30, 2016 at 11:38 am I’m sorry, but you don’t read the Daily Mail? (which is not as some claim a Hate Crime) because it seems a stable of the DM is “reveal the names of the false accusators” and “how the lies ruined the life of Proctor, Gambo etc etc
- The Blocked Dwarf
September 30, 2016 at 1:11 pm Sorry, you lose the internets. You used the word ‘read’ juxtaposed with the Daily Mail in a single sentence. That is illogical Captain.
- The Blocked Dwarf
- Peb
- Mark Parry
September 30, 2016 at 11:14 am I think this would make a great storyline for The Archers… as a follow-up to the Helen and Rob saga. It is oft said that truth is stranger than fiction and this is certainly a story that our children’s children will have trouble believing. I’m not sure whether the problem is that the #CSA inquiry has an impossible set of objectives, is too wide-ranging, is constructed on dodgy foundations, there are too many strong (and clashing) personalities within the team or just sheer incompetence? At this rate the £350million promised for the NHS by #Brexiteers will have to be diverted to this.
As ever, Ms Raccoon you have been concise and precise. Thank you.
- Peb
September 30, 2016 at 4:18 pm You may have a point. But as they insist on telling us, the DM is the highest selling tabloid in the uk. If they’ve decided they can make money from telling the other side of the story then isn’t this an interesting signal?
- Ho Hum
September 30, 2016 at 4:24 pm They make money from running both sides of the story. ..
Shock, Horror!
followed by
Oh No, it Wasn’t!Or the other way round, or even round and round, if it keeps the prurient, the prejudiced, or the hard of thinking, buying, or clicking, in
- tdf
September 30, 2016 at 7:06 pm “They make money from running both sides of the story. ..”
Yep.
Dacre is a clever operator. There’s a good reason the Mail website is one of the most read on the planet.
- tdf
- Ho Hum
- Magwitch
September 30, 2016 at 5:00 pm I doubt it was one of our PTS (patient transport service) ambulances, they’re only used for emergency work when it’s a life-threatening A1 job. Your case sounds like it was a doctor’s immediate call. Most likely you got sent a private ambulance. We have loads of these guys doing work for the East of England Ambulance service. They’re usually staffed by EMTs who have time to stop & buy donuts. They probably don’t carry defibrillators but all EEAST front line vehicles certainly have one. We don’t have single use blankets either. The laundry is still very well used.
As for DNRs, the NHS gets itself in a right ol’ tiswas over these things nowadays. The original is supposed to accompany the patient everywhere.- tdf
September 30, 2016 at 8:24 pm Anna,
I hope you are feeling better today.
“and a triplicate of senior judges who have preferred to spend more time with their family…”
Not a big thing, but in the interests of pedantry, I don’t think Fiona Woolf was ever a judge.
- tdf
September 30, 2016 at 8:38 pm “Fact checking, querying whether the Archbishop of Canterbury really did ride into view on a Unicorn whilst Ted Heath castrated you in the forest. Boring old fashioned stuff like that.”
That’s nothing!
I was molested by Margaret Thatcher and Charlemagne while being stung by a swarm of enormous Asian hornets.
Next, a sinister butler came into view. He was bearing a three headed swan, which proceeded to perform the most unnatural acts upon my person.
Finally – and this was the worst part, I assure you – I was tied to a chair and made to listen to Cliff Richard’s greatest hits on repeat.
- Ted Treen
October 2, 2016 at 12:14 am I believed you until the bit about Cliff’s greatest hits on repeat: no-one could be sufficiently cruel and heartless, surely.
- Ted Treen
- suffolkgirl
September 30, 2016 at 8:45 pm Courage is grace under pressure. Courageous Anna.
Another interesting article, and where do you find the witty illustrations for your pieces? I loved this one.
The inquiry should be rebooted but depressingly most comments on sites as disparate as the Mail and the Graun all indulge in conspiracy theories and tirades about the elite. I think this is a distraction from looking closer to home. Most abuse of any kind,imho, takes place in the home or near it, in the most mundane settings. Do they really think that everyone downloading sexual images of children is a card carrying member of the establishment?- suffolkgirl
September 30, 2016 at 9:55 pm Yes, absolutely. I do think that the endless iteration of lurid allegations about the great and the good are a displacement activity from thinking about what is more likely to be going on not so far from our own doorstep.
However, the inquiry doesn’t seem to be ma dated to evaluate the mass of allegations it is receiving, so that some concrete sense of the incidence of CSA is achieved. Is it right that the data relating to claims against the Savile estate, ie how many claims were not proceeded with or were otherwise unproved is still not published? I remember you wrote about that some time ago.- Ho Hum
October 1, 2016 at 1:55 am @ Anna
Just in case you haven’t seen this.
BBC Website @ approx 1.00am today, Sat 1 Oct 2016
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-37517619
Louis Theroux … on his …..documentary on Jimmy Savile …to be… broadcast on Sunday 2 October at 21:00 on BBC Two –
- Keith Walters
October 1, 2016 at 4:07 am Jimmy Saville was virtually unknown in Australia, but from what I can see, he seemed like a fairly normal person who made a good living pretending to be a sleazebag. Maybe I haven’t seen enough footage of him, but he doesn’t look all that different to me from any number of Australian comedians who have come and gone over the years. Perhaps he did too good a job for some people.
Benny Hill always did a bang-up job of playing a dirty old man, too, but I suppose he’s got no estate left to interest the ambulance-chasers.
It’s sad that the 19th century expression “Hot air” has been allowed to mutate into meaning “nonsense, waffle, pointless verbiage etc”.
What it originally meant was to the effect that the entirety of evidence to support a claim, election promise etc was somebody SAYING that something happened (or would happen), the only physical evidence being “Hot Air”….- Mr Wray
October 1, 2016 at 2:24 pm Yes that strange creature Mark Williams Thomas was on John Gaunt’s show recently having a go at Theroux for not reporting ‘evidence’ that Savile was a nonce whilst he was still alive. He could have stopped all that abuse … ahem.
The fact that Theroux is a nasty little ex-PBS who makes carefully edited films about left wing hate figures designed to make the targets look guilty, whether they are or not, is rarely mentioned, naturally.
- Keith Walters
- Keith Walters
October 1, 2016 at 4:12 am Sorry, Savile…..
- Ho Hum
October 1, 2016 at 2:18 pm Mr Wray
October 1, 2016Could have dropped off a patient first or en route back from the hospital after having dropped one there
Just because a taxi rolls up at the door with the piece of paper doesn’t prove stupidity on the part of the sender
- Mr Wray
October 1, 2016 at 2:39 pm Just because a taxi rolls up at the door with the piece of paper doesn’t prove stupidity on the part of the sender
Indeed not, but then I never said it was. Inefficient and costly, perhaps; but then that is par for the course for the Public Sector is it not?
- Mr Wray
- Ho Hum
October 1, 2016 at 2:48 pm If the marginal cost of delivering the note were then 0, or less than getting a bike courier, its not. But then, lack of understanding of public sector ops is nothing new, and often just par for the course
- Mr Wray
October 1, 2016 at 3:29 pm Sadly, I have plenty of experience of working with the Public Sector so I speak from a position of knowledge. It is indeed inefficient and costly.
Now if the taxi was on several errands and delivered the letter as a consequence of being nearby then the cost would be zero.
If the taxi was sent to deliver the letter and performed other tasks as well then the cost would be a proportion of the taxi fare. this might be close to zro but it would not be zero and would only be cost efficient if it was less than other means of delivering the letter.
If however the taxi was sent specifically to deliver that letter and did no other job in that run then the cost would be not zero. A courier will deliver a one off letter for a tenner, or less. An organisation like the NHS would get a much better deal. How much would a taxi cost?
Now, seriously. Which option do you think, from experience, the hospital chose?
- Ho Hum
October 1, 2016 at 3:44 pm If it had been me, I’d have got one of my staff to go and find some of the taxis we used regularly, might well even have a contract with, and asked if anyone going by that way could drop it off as a favour. Most of them know on which side their bread is buttered and it would have probably cost us nothing. OK, the urban environment can make that easier to do than might be the case in a rural one, but I’d try that first, before I’d call a bike or the like.
Not to say that I haven’t when it’s been absolutely essential, but paying for something is the last resort
- tdf
October 2, 2016 at 2:05 am Just had a quick peek at Twitter regarding recent discussion amongst the usual suspects as regards the latest developments in this ongoing farrago.
All I can say is as politely as possible is that “f****ing three+ way car-crash” springs to mind
- A Potted Plant
October 2, 2016 at 2:49 am Amazing lessons to be learned from a documentary titled: “Hitler of The Andes”, the story of the FBI’s post WW2 search for the truth about Adolph Hitler’s death. Much of relevance to these historic abuse inquiries and related police operations, etc., I believe. Now showing on Netflix in North America.
- Grilled Mouse
October 2, 2016 at 8:24 am It’s also on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g7ZL3Is9zU
- Grilled Mouse
- Savim
October 3, 2016 at 11:17 am We two old codgers of have vast experience of NHS strange ways since 2009 when no longer happy Jack got blood in his pee…shudders. Waiting for a bariatric ambulance. While his squeezed nerve paralysed his right arm during his entrapment at the foot of the stairwell. This fall was due to weakness after immunotherapy for bladder cancer. Seems to have done the trick. Cos he is still reluctantly here at age 86. Not a happy bunny. Like Anna we have to be grateful to the NHS. We still have the bariatric commode supplied by NHS in the house. Too expensive to collect and sanitise apparently. His right arm slowly sorted out meant six weeks of carers, for free, as I had a broken ankle in the same incident. Our latest A&E wait was 9hours with a lot of persons who looked quite well. Happy? Jack had a rip snorting bladder infection that had slurred his speech, hence a call to 111. Next time I will ring the GP number and screw antibiotics out of whoever calls. We were told he would have priority…untrue …..by a bossy paramedic. Oh we so troublesome oldies…50 years service to NHS behind us too. Abused as bed blockers and staying in our houses too long. Get thee to a care home. As for the recanting Theroux. Has he been on his knees praying for foregiveness for thinking Savile was an OK gent? I might sully my iPad with his latest offering if it is posted there by the Beeb. How very dare he think Savile not vile, so silly of him to be taken in.
- Grandpa1940
October 4, 2016 at 4:29 pm …and them’s my sentiments as well!
https://mikecunningham.wordpress.com/2016/10/04/and-when-did-you-last-see-your-father/
- tdf
October 6, 2016 at 8:06 pm - tdf
October 16, 2016 at 4:08 am Interesting to note in passing that a certain Twitter avatar has managed to resurrect the corpse of Leon Brittan for another beating, while libelling a current Conservative MP.
- tdf
October 17, 2016 at 5:24 pm So has the inquiry finished yet?
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