Sometimes things get lost in the rush – especially if they’re hushed up.
So Patrick Rock, the former aide of David Cameron who had to resign after being arrested and charged with possessing imagery of children being abused, appeared before a judge at Southwark Crown Court on October 16.
This Blog warned last month that the case would fade into obscurity again unless somebody attended that court on the day and was able to publicise the date to which it was adjourned.
Obviously This Writer could not attend as Southwark is a very long way from Mid Wales.
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A Rock in a hard place: Patrick Rock, formerly a senior civil servant and policy advisor, who now faces allegations that he possessed indecent images of child abuse.
At long last, Patrick Rock – the former deputy head of 10 Downing Street’s policy unit and aide to David Cameron – is to appear on court to answer charges that he possessed imagery of children being abused.
He will appear at Southwark Crown Court for legal argument on October 16 – more than 20 months after his original arrest. This information was obtained by a member of the public, in spite of protracted attempts by the Cabinet Office to claim that it had no information about what was going on. You can read that particular saga here.
Mr Rock was arrested on February 13, suspected of possessing child abuse imagery – shortly after he resigned his position working on policies that we all thought were intended to make it harder to find such images on the Internet.
Details of his resignation and arrest were not released to the public, but the media sprang into action and in a matter of days, the Daily Mail ran a major story accusing three leading members of the Labour Party of sympathising with paedophile groups.
It was only after this story had run its course that the major news media made the public aware of Mr Rock’s arrest – and Vox Politicalwas not the only blog that voiced suspicions about the sequence of events.
Rest assured that this case is likely to fade into obscurity again unless someone attends Southwark Crown Court on October 16 and publicises the date to which the case is adjourned.
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Closed door: Emails from 10 Downing Street are deleted in order to prevent embarrassing facts from reaching the public.
Downing Street has a “dysfunctional” email system which deletes messages after three months to prevent information being passed to the public in response to Freedom of Information requests, according to an incendiary report in The Independent.
It states: “Emails are only saved beyond three months if an individual saves them, which former Downing Street aides said caused ‘hugely frustrating’ problems over staff having different recollections of what was discussed an agreed at meetings.
“‘It means that people don’t remember things,’ a special adviser told the Financial Times. ‘It is dysfunctional. Then they check their emails and they don’t exist any more.'”
It seems a government official insisted the system had been introduced under a recommendation from the National Archives for “best records management”.
Yeah, right.
How can it be “best records management” to delete important information that should be saved for the record?
It will be interesting to hear the official point of view about this from the National Archives.
In the meantime – thank goodness – This Writer still has his copy of an email between the DWP and the Information Commissioner’s office, confirming that details of people who have died while claiming Employment and Support Allowance are available and may be published within the £600 cost limit for FoI requests.
The DWP may not have Downing Street’s automatic deletion system – or maybe it does. In any case, hard copy doesn’t lie.
Incidentally, at the time of writing, the petition in support of the DWP honouring the Vox Political FoI request stands at nearly 135,000 signatures. A lot of people want to know the facts.
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An anti-fracking campaigner has been arrested after he suggested that he would climb “gazelle-like” over the Downing Street fence and make a citizen’s arrest on David Cameron, George Osborne and Ed Davey for misconduct in public office.
Paul Mobbs was arrested yesterday afternoon after spending several hours in a dialogue with police officers who eventually arrested him under anti-terrorism legislation.
He was carrying copies of all his research, in the belief that – if arrested – this would have to be admitted as evidence and could provide proof that he had a legal case against members of the government.
“Around 3pm today Paul was arrested under the Terrorism Act (Highways section) for blocking the entrance to Downing Street in his attempt to make a citizen’s arrest of… key members in the government. He has acted in this way as he believes that members in government are guilty of Misconduct In Public Office in reference to fracking.
“He arrived with a small team of witnesses and documenters at the entrance to Downing Street at around 11.15 … and proceeded to explain his intentions to the police on the gates. At first they ignored him but his politeness and clear knowledge of his rights necessitated that they eventually sent in their commanding officer who was joined quickly by two other officers.
“He explained that, as he has exhausted all other routes for taking action with regards to the fact that his research shows that the crime of Misconduct In Public Office is being committed, he has only one last resort which is to effect a citizen’s arrest himself… His arguments were erudite and his temper remained pleasant and non confrontational at all times, as you can see from the photographs. In fact, there was not one officer that he spoke with who did not end up smiling and laughing, particularly when he said that he was going to leap over the fence soon and they responded that he probably was a bit too big and old for that and he responded that, being an avid rambler, he can move ‘gazelle like’ if he wanted.
“He had on his person all his research and that would have to be admissible evidence in any trial and of course, his research may very well prove that members of government are actually breaking the law. In fact, you could see that over the course of the three hours he was talking with them, many of them [the police] were finding his evidence compelling themselves.
Arrest: Mr Mobbs is taken into custody.
“Eventually, he took to stating that he was going to use his body to block any traffic coming in or out of Downing Street. At this point, a police van turned up and he was arrested. As you can see in the picture, he went peacefully. We believe he was taken to Charing Cross police station.”
His final report on fracking is soon to be released – he gave that to the police as soon as he arrived at Downing Street. He has also released an update of his ‘frackogram’, which he says seems to point clearly at serious misconduct in office.
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The Coalition also awarded a contract treating NHS patients with brain tumours to the private healthcare company Hospital Corporation of America, a firm that has been accused by the Competition Commission of overcharging for its services by up to £193 million between 2009 and 2011 – but that has also donated at leave £17,000 to the Conservative Party since it came into office.
According to the National Health Action Party, £10 billion worth of NHS contracts have been awarded to private firms since the Health and Social Care Act was passed in 2012. How many of these have donated money to the Conservative Party, and in what quantities?
Meanwhile, a record five million working people are now in low-paid jobs, according to the Resolution Foundation. That’s around one-sixth of the total workforce. This is a direct result of government policies that threaten people on benefits with the loss of their financial support if they do not take any job available to them – at whatever rate of pay is being offered. The insecurity this creates means firms are free to offer the bare minimum, and keep workers on that rate for years at a time, and pocket the profits for themselves – after donating money to the Conservative Party for making it all possible.
There has been no benefit to the national economy from any of these actions; the deficit that Cameron said he would eliminate is currently at £100.7 billion per year and the national debt is almost twice as high as when he first darkened the doors of Number 10. This is because any improvement in the national finances would interfere with his real plan, which is to dismantle all public services (except possibly national security and the judiciary – albeit a court system available only to the rich) and hand the provision of those services to the private sector in return for fat backhanders from the companies involved.
The evidence is beyond question. David Cameron said he would govern in the national interest but has used his time as prime minister to further enrich his already-wealthy business donors, and consequently his own political party, through the impoverishment of working people and those who rely on the State for support.
What sort of respect is due to a man like that?
By custom, here in the UK, the prime minister is given a degree of respect due to his or her position as the head of the government – but respect must be earned and we judge our politicians on their actions.
Cameron has earned nothing from the British people other than our disgust. He is a liar, at the head of a government whose mendaciousness seemingly knows no bounds. And he is a thief; every benefit claimant who has had their payments sanctioned or their claim denied had paid into the system – via direct or indirect taxation – and had a right to expect the support they had funded.
He should be in prison.
Unfortunately, we (the people) do not currently have the wherewithal to put him there. We have to register our opinion in other ways.
This means he gets no respect at all. He is not the prime minister – he is the Downing Street squatter. There is no need to make way for him when he passes – Dean Balboa Farley was right to run into him. There is no need to pay attention to the things he says – if you get a chance to talk to him, just talk over him as though he wasn’t there. He is a pariah; he should be shunned at every opportunity.
He has disrespected and dishonoured the highest public office in the land. He deserves no better.
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Caught out again: Grant Shapps is yet again having to justify his own shady behaviour.
Here’s a story to get you irritated and annoyed on a hot summer’s day: Your Prime Minister, his Chancellor and the chairman of their political party have all found novel property-based cheats.
According to the Daily Mirror, David Cameron and George Osborne have done a secret deal with the taxman to cut thousands of pounds off the tax they pay while they are living in their famous grace-and-favour homes on Downing Street.
Under the change, which HM Revenue and Customs has buried deep in the small print of its accounts, Cameron is saving a minimum of £1,228 a year, while Osborne’s bill has more than halved, saving him £1,560 a year.
The Mirror points out that this means Osborne is paying just £23 a week and Cameron no more than £35 to live at Britain’s most exclusive address, while the average rent in the UK is £195.
The paper quotes Alex Hilton, director of pressure group Generation Rent, who mocked the top Tories with their election slogan from 2010: “We’re blatantly not all in it together if the residents of Downing Street can wangle themselves a nice bonus while ordinary families are seeing their rent go up by more than wages.”
Meanwhile Grant Shapps, the Tory co-chairman who hid his own shady business deals behind the false names ‘Michael Green’ and ‘Sebastian Fox’ for the first four years of his Parliamentary career, has been receiving campaign funds from a Conservative club that has not submitted a tax return since 2009.
Conservative Club (Hatfield) Ltd has been fined £3,000 by the Financial Conduct Authority for its failure to produce accounts or name its officers. Despite these issues, it seems the club has been entirely able to provide £140,000 to fund Shapps as a candidate in his Welwyn Hatfield constituency.
Shapps has claimed the club is not connected to his local Conservative Association, which is odd – because not only is it based in the same building, paying rent to the association, but its members are all counted as members of the Conservative Party as well.
Was Shapps among the Conservatives who justified last year’s Gagging Act by claiming it was vital that the public had transparency from their MPs?
And didn’t Cameron say his government would be the most transparent ever, in its affairs?
Liars. Pigs with their snouts in the trough, all of them.
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Questions to answer: Maria Miller, the minister for evasion, cannot be expected to respond. She obstructed Parliament’s inquiry into her expenses claims and her eventual apology for her misdeeds lasted just 32 seconds.
This blog asked yesterday whether Downing Street communications chief Craig Oliver was a liar, an incompetent, or both after he denied that government officers threatened the Daily Telegraph with tougher press regulation if it published its investigation into Maria Miller’s expenses.
It turns out he was both.
The Telegraph has now published a recording of the conversation between reporter Holly Watt and Miller’s advisor Joanna Hindley, on which its allegations are based. There can be no doubt that the reporter did indeed have Leveson held over her (corruptly); there can be little doubt that this was done at the request of Miller; and there can be no doubt at all that Mr Oliver knew about it.
So – a liar. And incompetent, because he had obviously discounted the possibility that the Telegraph reporter might have recorded the exchange.
It appears that Mr Oliver still has his job, despite having become the second person to disgrace it out of only two appointed by David Cameron. We cannot comment on Joanna Hindley.
The bullying, possibly blackmailing fraudster Maria Miller – who also persecuted thousands of disabled people while she was minister for equalities, also remains part of the government.
This speaks volumes about the lack of judgement displayed by ‘comedy’ Prime Minister David Cameron.
The longer he delays removing his rotten minister, her rotten advisor and his rotten media chief, the more rotten he and his government will become – in the opinion of the public.
And for this Prime Minister, public opinion is everything.
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Self-satisfied: Downing street communications chief Craig Oliver. But does he have any reason to look so pleased with himself?
Is Downing Street director of communications Craig Oliver a liar, or incompetent? Or is he an incompetent liar?
These are the questions we should ask after he denied threatening the Daily Telegraph with tougher press regulation if it published details of its investigation into Maria Miller’s expenses.
The Telegraph reported that Miller’s parents were living in her taxpayer-funded south London second home, implying that she had fraudulently claimed expenses for it, in December 2012 – and immediately followed its report with another, alleging that government advisers tried to bully the paper out of running the story.
The Telegraph claimed that Miller’s special advisor, Joanna Hindley, told a reporter that the Editor of the Telegraph was involved in meetings with the Prime Minister and the Culture Secretary over implementing the recommendations made by Lord Justice Leveson, and that the reporter should discuss the issue with “people a little higher up your organisation”.
The report continued: “Miss Hindley immediately contacted the Telegraph’s head of public affairs to raise concerns about the story. The news group decided to delay publication in order to ensure the facts were correct.
“Having carried out further checks, the newspaper concluded that the story was accurate and decided to publish the article at the first opportunity, meaning it appeared on the day same-sex marriage was debated in the Commons.” The government then suggested that the Telegraph was using the story to “overshadow” the announcement.
“Miss Hindley also accused the Telegraph of harassing Mrs Miller’s father, John Lewis,” the story continued
“In fact, reporters had a brief conversation with Mr Lewis in order to establish how long he had lived with Mrs Miller. Over the course of the conversation, Mr Lewis said he enjoyed reading the Telegraph.”
These claims are clearly damaging to Miss Hindley’s reputation as she is shown to be threatening, on Miller’s behalf, to use government powers to clamp down on reports in the Telegraph, which would be an abuse of the system.
Today’s report on the BBC News website has former Telegraph editor Tony Gallagher claiming that Mr Oliver contacted him to “lean” on the newspaper and “prevent it going about its legitimate business”.
He said: “She has done the free press a great favour,” he said.
“Maria Miller provides a cast-iron example of why politicians should have no power over the press.”
Mr Oliver denied the claim that the Telegraph was threatened. But the question remains: If this is true, why did he not take appropriate action sooner?
If he is right in his claim, then the government could have sued the Telegraph for libelling not only Miss Hindley, but also Mr Oliver andMiller herself. Why didn’t he?
The Telegraph provided its own version of events immediately after they took place, but Mr Oliver has waited 16 months to offer us his side of the story. It’s too late now.
We can only conclude that he is either lying about what happened, incompetent in not having taken the appropriate action at the appropriate time, or an incompetent liar because – given then evidence available to us – it was those acting for the government who misbehaved.
And the bullying, possibly blackmailing fraudster is still in her job. Why?
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For someone who was educated at Eton and Oxford, it seems strange that David Cameron never learns his lesson.
Today in Prime Minister’s Questions he got on the wrong side of an argument on the Coalition government’s botched sale of the Royal Mail and committed every MP’s cardinal offence: He knowingly lied to Parliament.
Ed Miliband had caught him out with a question about share prices, pointing out that Royal Mail shares had been sold far too cheaply. Referring to Cameron, he described the Prime Minister as “not so much the ‘Wolf of Wall Street’, more the ‘Dunce of Downing Street’.
Cameron hotly denied that his government had bungled the sale, and in response to Miliband’s claim that nobody had wanted it, he told Parliament that Labour had planned to do the same. “It’s in their manifesto!” he ejaculated.
It isn’t.
I have a copy of Labour’s 2010 manifesto on my computer, so I was able to check it immediately and found no mention of any such sell-off. Cameron was inaccurate.
Not only that, but unless the memory cheats, this is not the first time Cameron has made such a claim. His advisors would certainly have informed him of any inaccuracies, so any repetition is a conscious decision. Cameron was lying.
This blog has covered the offence known as Contempt of Parliament in considerable detail before (mostly in relation to serial offender Iain Duncan Smith). By rights, anybody misleading Parliament who does not apologise and put the record straight should be expelled from the House. The current government seems to be ignoring this (for obvious reasons).
Labour’s Jon Ashworth raised a point of order after PMQs, demanding that Cameron return to the Commons to correct himself. Fat chance.
A spokesperson insisted that the language in the Labour manifesto was “similar” to a 2009 plan by Lord Mandelson to sell off 30 per cent of the Royal Mail and prepare the remainder for modernisation.
This means nothing. If it isn’t in the manifesto, Cameron can’t claim that it is.
But then, Cameron seems very confused about manifesto pledges. He once claimed that Andrew Lansley’s reorganisation of the NHS in England had been a part of the Conservative Party’s 2010 manifesto, for example – despite having himself ordered that nobody should mention it in the run-up to that year’s election, in case it put voters off supporting the Tories.
I leave you with Martin Rowson’s cartoon on the Royal Mail sale, for Tribune magazine.
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It seems the media mogul made the comments in March, in a private meeting with a group of journalists from The Sun who had been arrested over allegations of illegal news-gathering – including payments to police and other public officials for information.
In the recording, a Sun journalist asks: “I’m pretty confident that the working practices that I’ve seen here are ones that I’ve inherited, rather than instigated. Would you recognise that all this pre-dates many of our involvement here?”
Murdoch replies: “We’re talking about payments for news tips from cops; that’s been going on a hundred years, absolutely. You didn’t instigate it.”
At another time, he says: “It was the culture of Fleet Street.”
The full story, and a transcript of the recording, are on the Exaro News site, but the revelation raises serious questions about the phone-tapping trial of Andy Coulson, Rebekah Brooks and others, which is currently taking place.
If Brooks and Coulson are on trial for allowing corrupt and illegal practices in their newspapers, why not Murdoch?
And what are the implications for David Cameron, the Prime Minister who may have allowed this kind of corruption into Downing Street?
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