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Impeccable credentials Is this a case of ‘hiding in plain sight’?
A detective responsible for investigating racially motivated crime lives in a home filled with Nazi SS uniforms and tributes to Hitler, The Telegraph can reveal.
Det Con Linda Daniels, who is married to a known racist and BNP member who believes the Holocaust was “exaggerated”, works in the community safety unit at the police station in Notting Hill, one of the most ethnically diverse areas of London.
The unit, one of many set up across the city as a result of the inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, investigates “hate crimes”, including “racist crime, domestic violence, homophobic crime and hate mail”.
Her home, however, which she shares with her 52-year-old husband Keith Beaumont, contains a life-size mannequin of a Nazi SS soldier, with swastikas on its helmet and belt, in the hallway.
Or perhaps its more case of ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’? Do you think Detective Constable Daniels suspects her hubby at all? Surely the swastikas are just a bit of a giveaway?
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Must make for interesting dinner-table chats!
If she has chosen to get in on the “race relations/diversity” scam and performs her job to the satisfaction of her employers, what she chooses to keep in her own home, other than an unreported corpse, is no one else’s business. A lot of people profess insincere beliefs in order to land a job. She hasn’t committed a crime in Britain.
Verity writes:
“She hasn’t committed a crime in Britain.”
Quite so. Well… not this week, at any rate.
I’m rather surprised to see the Telegraph publishing this sort of nonsense.
Then again, the dear old dowager has started exhibiting some worrying signs of Guardianitis of late. I do hope Conrad Black isn’t starting to lose his marbles.
G Cooper – I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s clocked The Telegraph’s tottering steps into Guardianista territory. Not only have they been enthusiastic assassins of IDS, and begun printing rubbish, as in this tabloidesque story, with a straight face, but their opinion pages, with the exception of Mark Steyn and Tom Utley, are now on ‘ludes. Just yards and yards of boilerplate from most columnists, including the inexplicable Adam Nicholson. They published a bylined story on the Hutton enquiry a month or so back that was so illiterate and riddled with ignorant, vaguely leftwing, assumptions that I wrote to Charles Moore, quoting it. Even if they’re “reaching out” and hiring non-English speakers as writers as part of some demented “diversity” programme, surely their subeditors and page editors still speak English. I fear you’re right about Conrad Black (although his wife, Barbara Amiel is certainly still fighting the good fight with lucid thinking and asperity). About Charles Moore resigning a prestigious and well-paid position as editor to write someone’s biography … how credible is that? And for the last two weeks they’ve had their new Canadian editor who clearly knows nothing about Britain or British politics.
Sound of another bastion crashing down.
Verity writes: “I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s clocked The Telegraph’s tottering steps into Guardianista territory.”
It is worrying, I have to say. I agree with you about Barbara Amiel and Tom Utley (though I’m ambivalent about Mark Steyn – when he’s straight I think he’s one of the best writers on the paper, but, personally, I usually find his ‘comic’ writing oddly unfunny) and, yes, Adam Nicholson seems like nothing so much as the village idiot.
Then again, the Telegraph has long had its seriously worrying aspects. If you read a newsprint version and get to see the TV and film reviews, you’ll know what I mean. Spurious Guardianista social commentary is littered throughout both and the recommended viewing could usually have been lifted straight from Time Out. Did Charles Moore never read his own supplements? Similarly, the media commentary of editorial director Kim Fletcher can be troubling at times.
I was never particularly impressed by Charles Moore as an editor – he didn’t seem to have a real Fleet St news sense and let far too much chattering classes waffle into the paper.
Perhaps the new regime will be an improvement. But not if this ‘Nazi stormtroopers in the Met’ piece is in any way representative of the its thinking.
Verity, G Cooper
Nobody is suggesting that this woman is not discharging her duties properly.
However, she is charged with detecting ‘racism’ and enforcing ‘anti-hate’ laws. The enabling provisions are drafted so widely in this respect that she could well have to investigate somebody who, for example, made a public complaint about illegal immigration.
Yet she goes every night to a house festooned with swastikas and busts of Hitler! I think the Telegraph is not untoward in pointing out the irony.
I find the Telegraph to be an enjoyable read. They do sometimes publish things that are a bit off but then again who doesn’t? The DT is still the best paper in the UK. The Telegraph wasn’t wot killed off IDS, it was CCO, May and a few bitter MPs.
The media is not responsible for the Tory Party mess, no matter how often some Tories bleat about it. At conference I didn’t see one member of the press hounding a member of CCO staff or other Tory staff member about IDS. What I saw quite often was these people finding the nearest press member and volunteering information. It happened to me (covering it for The Sprout), at least twice each night of the conference.
There’s a very telling remark in the Telegraph report by the (odious) Nick Griffin: “While I would regard it as fairly tasteless, there is no law against having bits of memorabilia in your home. Trevor Phillips [chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality] has a bust of Lenin on his desk and the man [Lenin] is a mass murderer.”
This is unanswerable. What’s sauce for the (Nazi) goose is sauce for the (Commie) gander. I always thought Trevor Phillips was a fool. I never really thought he was a knave, until now. By rights, he should be hounded over this (he won’t be).
I can’t agree with a number of other comments to the effect that what this woman does in the privacy of her own home has no bearng on her ability to discharge her responsibiities. That’s pious nonsense. It might be true in the best of all worlds, but in the best of all worlds people wouldn’t commemorate genocide. This woman may well be perfectly capable as a beat officer, but as a member of an anti-racist task force (no matter how otiose we might think such an outfit to be) she is clearly unsuitable. If you can show me a single example of a person who abandons all their beliefs and prejudices when they sit down at their office chair I’ll be astonished.
As for the Telegraph – it does still have the best op-ed content of any UK broadsheet. Janet Daley is good value, as is City Editor Neil Collins. Stephen Robinson’s Free Britain column, with its allied Beebwatch, is unique as far as I know. And they have Craig Brown. What more needs to be said?
David Gillies writes (of Trevor Phillips):
“By rights, he should be hounded over this (he won’t be).”
Perhaps, but surely, that is the point? Were we living in an equitable world, where people were held equally to account, then the Telegraph might be excused. But, as things stand in the UK, this sort of reporting is simply doing the Left’s work for them.
Personally, I’m more inclined to take Verity’s line. Do we ‘vet’ judges? Schoolteachers? ‘Social workers’? Perhaps we should, but until we do – and do it even-handedly – it seems that a free pass is issued only to members of the Leftist ‘intelligentsia’, so that they can support whatever Communist butchers they like (Hobsbawm springs readily to mind) with little more than an indulgent chuckle from the media.
As for the Telegraph, I agree with you about all the writers you mentioned with the exception of Craig Brown, whom I regard as almost invariably fatuous. But I would like to add one to the list – the magnificent Michael Wharton, aka Peter Simple.
Aaaargh. Whenever I get to London, the FIRST thing I do is buy a DT because it’s the best way of catching up (reading Private Eye takes a couple of issues to catch the inside jokes and references).
Okay, I buy the DT only after a good steak ‘n kidney pie, but whatever.
Understand that Tories in Brit are actually only slightly to the Right of (mainstream) American Democrats like Joe Lieberman, so it’s unsurprising that a Tory newspaper like the DT is delicately-hued pink around the edges.
All that said, I love the irony of a member of the PC police allowing a Nazi SS mannequin in her home — unfortunately, though, this will probably result in her dismissal rather than the abolition of the PC police (which would have been my preferred response).
David G – It’s the intrusive nature of The Telegraph’s investigation that sickens me. They got into these people’s home under false pretences, while they were away on holiday. Her husband’s personal beliefs, however repulsive to the rest of us, are not our business. How did The Telegraph’s intrusion serve the national interest? It’s the chiefs of such oppressive departments they need to go after, not the foot soldiers. And the MPs who enable the creation of such authoritarian, illiberal and unBritish posts in the first place.
Far more serious, and interesting, is Trevor Phillips – who I always thought was a preening self-server – not fool, David; self-server along the lines of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, but not that slick, having a bust of Lenin in his pork barrel, taxpayer funded office. How stupid do you have to be? Does anyone know how much this man “earns” if that is not too strong a term, in his publicly funded “job”?
No, I’m sorry, the Met should recruit their anti-racist persons exclusively from the ranks of the BNP. It isn’t good enough just taking on a few of their wives and girlfriends. If we really want this creepy PC policing to work we can’t just rely on yer average racist copper, whoever she’s married to.
Besides, all those BNP dudes would have the opportunity to dress up in uniform and get out of the bedroom. What more could they possibly want?
Verity:
” … they’ve had their new Canadian editor who clearly knows nothing about Britain or British politics.”
The new Canadian editor of the Telegraph spent his formative years at the Telegraph, before setting sail for Canada and the National Post; where, incidently, comment was made about his lack of knowledge about Canada and Canadian politics.
Cheers
J M Heinricks – I stand corrected, but it’s all Mark Steyn’s fault. I’m sure he said, in a column written about Canadian newspapers, that the new editor had no experience of British newspaper work. If it wasn’t Mark Steyn, it was someone else.
I still want to know what Trevor Phillips is doing displaying Communist – the most oppressive, murderous regime in the history of mankind -memorabilia in a taxpayer funded office. Of course, the CRE is itself a repressive, authoritarian, organisation. It’s a very unBritish, divisive outfit and should be dismantled stat. Red Ken could put Phillips in charge of parking meters or something.