Matthew Parris recently, in the Times (registration required):
The media and political world is in a lather about whether the (now) de facto deputy prime minister once accessed pornography in his office. Here I am, fretting — some will say nitpicking — about whether it was appropriate for a now-retired Metropolitan Police officer (1) to have gathered and kept what he claims to be the evidence for these allegations, though there is no suggestion the law was broken; (2) to have disobeyed orders by keeping the evidence; and (3) nine years later to have put the allegations into the public domain.
My acquaintance with Damian Green is slight. He strikes me as one of those necessary second-rank men (in a world of third and fourth-rank men) who combine a useful level-headedness with a dispiriting blandness: podgy and unflappable, with the advantage at least — a quality in a Tory MP to be fallen on with relief — of not being mad. So my strong sense of injustice in this case has little to do with the merits of Mr Green and everything to do with what looks like a co-ordinated police vendetta against a politician they’ve clashed with.
He concludes:
When it comes to issues of rumour and reputation I’m no dry rationalist. Every journalist knows that the appearance of things does matter, and that stern logic cannot always rescue a wounded public figure. We know too that “process” stories often fail to hold public attention, and this column’s complaint about the abuse of police powers is essentially a process story.
But behind process may lie principle. What Damian Green was alleged to have watched might be thought disgusting, but what two former Met officers have been up to is little short of sinister. Disgust can rule the headlines and may win the day, but former police officers are trying to destroy a senior minister with whom they have clashed. This is London, not Chicago. Parliamentarians, in retreat for a decade now, should unite to push back.
I hold no particular brief for Mr Green; I disagree with him on Brexit. It actually worries me that some Brexiters I know are almost gloating that a pro-Remain senior Tory has had to resign after giving, it is said, less-than-truthful answers about the matter of his computer, but the fact remains that, as Parris says, evidence gathered in a decade-ago investigation, and not remotely connected to it, was brought up for no other reason than I can think of to embarrass and damage an elected politician. The ex-copper in question, who appears to nurse a grudge, seems, as Parris says, to be arguing not that what Green did was illegal, but improper. So we are getting into the murky territory of police officers taking moral stands, they claim, about what a democratically elected political figure does. (See here, for a version of events in the Guardian.)
I remember in the early days of this blog that we sometimes used to refer to the UK police as the “paramilitary wing of the Guardian newspaper”, more concerned about enforcing PC doctrines, or chasing after real or alleged bogeymen of the Right, such as those saying mean things about homosexuals, Muslims, etc, than catching crooks. The recent period post the Jimmy Savile fiasco (a paedophile who preyed on people for decades) seems to have seen the police morph, perhaps out of guilt about failing to nail the old BBC presenter, into a hyperactive pursuer of alleged perverts, with due process of law taking a back seat. The recent shabby treatment of Sir Cliff Richard, the entertainer, is an example of where this sort of zeal leads.
As an aside, it appears that the Tory Party, in its enfeebled parliamentary state, is or has been unwilling to clamp down on the police, to insist on reforms and push back against the assault on Common Law principles of fairness and due process. The Met are not necessarily part of any sort of Deep State (conspiracy theory alert!) taking root but they are certainly showing a level of presumption that is dangerous in a liberal order. The police are, in some respects, out of control, and need to be reined in. Just imagine the damage that can be done if police are emboldened to chase after enemies if or when Mr Corbyn and his re-heated Marxist allies take office. Something to think about for 2018.
Signs perhaps of MPs waking up to the problem.
May I just point out that the only reason you can describe Jimmy Savile as “a paedophile who preyed on people for decades” is that he is dead and you can’t libel a dead person. It may be that he was a paedophile but many of the allegations were trivial and he never got the chance to defend himself.
I have a simple proposition for the reform of police discipline. An aggrieved citizen could bring a case of impeachment before a jury without a judge sitting, and explain the case. On conviction, the police officer would be stripped of office, pension (which should be private anyway) and ordered to pay compensation of all pay received since the incident complained of to the impeacher, with imprisonment for debt. Appeal only to another jury, with double-or-quits on penalties.
No gloating from me. I feel no sorrow that Mr Green is gone but a degree of concern at the manner of it.
Frank (December 22, 2017 at 10:53 am), if Savile were alive I would unhesitatingly describe him as a paedophile. While I hope I’d have the courage to tell the truth even when dangerous, I would not feel afraid of the outcome of any libel case. (Ditto John Nathan Turner, also dead, and suchlike.) His death is very far from being the only reason or even a required reason why I could risk it.
Was this homosexual porn?
Was this kiddie porn?
Are we to understand that a deputy PM improperly admired boobs and ass?
Does Page three (six?) of (can’t remember daily) exist anymore?
Has anyone mansplained to the bobbies….”Tough titties?”, NOW we’re going to
have to run a colonoscopy on YOU, with Nelson’s original telescope?
How is that this former police officer has not been charged with a variety of crimes?
Oh wait, “former police officer”, question answers itself.
Corruption and disgusting decadence.
CaptDMO – no, Page 3 of The Sun no longer exists in print form, but is still available on their online edition.
Or that’s what a friend told me . . . . . .
(It was hounded off the newsstands by a typical SJW campaign, which is now engaged in cutting out little paper bikinis, to be pasted onto the Botticellis at the National Gallery.)
llater,
llamas
It may be that he was a paedophile but many of the allegations were trivial and he never got the chance to defend himself.
And many of the allegations weren’t trivial. And there were several cases where the police/prosecutors got close to nabbing him, but failed to do so. That explains the guilt, and explains why, in classic over-compensation fashion, we now have this trend of going after people for alleged offences, often trampling over procedural rules in the process, as my article stated.
I am not going to parse through all the claims and counter-claims made about the late Mr Savile, other than to say yes, it is true that one cannot libel the dead; it is worth also noting that all kinds of people in public life today seem to be resigning on what is often not much more than one set of allegations, unproven in a court of law.
And as I mentioned with the Cliff Richard case, very occasionally the plods over-reach and pay a penalty.
Politics is tribal J.P. – it is not nice, but one does rejoice in the misfortunes of one’s enemies, just as one grieves for the misfortunes of one’s friends.
By “not being mad” Matthew Paris means that Mr Green is against British independence (to be in favour of independence is to be “mad” according to that piece of excrement Matthew Paris). Mr Green was working against the independence of my country – and if he can not be got for that then something else will do, as with Mr Capone and tax evasion.
As it happens it appears that Mr Green is GUILTY of breaking the ministerial code by lying about matters investigation, and women are coming forward accusing him of XYZ – I do not remember any sympathy from Mr Paris (or people here) for Roy Moore and there was far LESS evidence against Roy Moore than there is against Damian Green.
Now the case moves on to “what did the Prime Minister know and when did she know it?” – did Mrs “Remainer” May try and cover up for her old friend Mr “Remainer” Green?
Some people rather resent not being allowed a vote for the leader of their party (an “election” with one candidate). And everyone should resent the vote for independence from the European Union in June 2016 being undermined by a government that seems determined to carry on paying vast sums money to the European Union for year,s and determined to keep obeying all European Union regulations (including any new ones the European Union may think up) basically for ever. Now it may be that the Prime Minister is NOT doing this – that the lady is really making offers to the European Union in the hope that, in the end, the European Union will reject the offer and the whole “deal” (pay them 40 billion Pounds and obey all their regulations for years-and-years) will collapse. If this is the real agenda then I will apologise.
But not till then.
As I said, Paul Marks, people who are cheering the demise of Green will not be laughing when or if they become entangled with the police in a similar fashion. When we create monsters such as the sort of cops who are happy to use unauthorised evidence to pursue grudges, it is a rule of thumb to regard this as a bad idea. The fact that Green is a Remainer, possibly a bit of a sleaze, etc, etc, is besides the point. Due process exists precisely to protect those who aren’t popular, sympathetic or well connected.
Yes, there are some moments of schadenfreude to enjoy, but this is a pastime to be taken with care. Karma, as they say.
Johnathan Pearce: Would you care to list which of the Savile allegations you refer to. All I have seen so far are tripe on stilts. But if there is anything of substance I would be glad to have identifying details for research purposes.
Thank you.
Mr Ecks, the sheer volume of claims, from different people across the UK, etc, would seem to suggest that these are not just “tripe on stilts”, and my reading of the cases suggests at the very least that the CPS lacked the willingness to put these matters to the test. If we were talking about only a few claims, from money-grabbing types, I’d share your view, but the scale and duration of the claims that existed are too many. Sure, it would have been much better had the claims been made when he was alive to face them and for justice to be done, but there it is.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19921658 – a Google search brings up such a vast haul who knows where to start? But I suspect your mind is made up, “Mr Ecks”.
Try this for size: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2970049/Abuse-grand-scale-Jimmy-Savile-raped-sexually-assaulted-victims-aged-5-75-41-NHS-hospitals-including-60-Stoke-Mandeville-24-year-reign-abuse.html
41 people seems quite a lot. Have fun shooting all the evidence down.
“Once accessed pornography in his office”?
Who the excrementing copulation could possibly care about that, in itself?
Paul do you really approve of the police being used for hatchet jobs on political opponents?
What about (4) whether it was appropriate for the BBC to ‘interview’ the ex-cop on the Toady Show and give him carte blanche to spread the smear to millions of people.
Not that it’s equivalent … or anything – Keith Vaz – one gets the impression that if a Labour apparatchik were similarly accused an episode of bowel gas discomfort would be adequate excuse.
I’m no fan of Green but by’eck the perps in this deserve a pensionectomy
As for BBC R4 Toady – the plummeting telly tax take speaks for itself.
I’ll say. Anybody who can hold on to information for almost a decade waiting for the perfect time to release it is pretty scary.
But it does raise the question – why now?
You start with the maxim ‘He who alleges must prove’, it’s very easy to apply and has served England well, or else you may as well believe in rape by Unicorns.
Perry,
I think that for Paul, it might be worth recalling a Churchill quote.
Mr Ed, the evidence against Savile appears overwhelming. Dozens and dozens of cases that corroborate.
And that’s why the police have a guilt complex. They messed up, massively,
I repeat, he who alleges must prove, ignore that and you have no law. There is nothing more to be said on the matter.
It was the scale that first made me think it was bullshit, tbh. The reports, if true, would have had Savile running major paedophile rings out of damned near every children’s hospital in the country and him present at every one simultaneously in a nefarious scheme that would make Blofeld look amateurish. Some of it was so obviously made up, and I wonder why there was a need to make stuff up about someone if they were guilty.
Johnathan Pearce: Your links are the same old, same old garbage.
The vast number of allegations–now into thousands–indicates that what happened was the creation of a panic.
From the first accuser –who self described as a “feminist who writes fictionalised accounts of sexual abuse” to the legions of debunked tall tales: the Duncroft circus, the 10 year old boy who only just escapes being sodomised by Savile in the back seat of A car. I say A car as 3 bullshit incarnations of that chestnut have already been debunked one after the other. The last version of which appears as tall tale ( number 11 if memory serves) in the Stoke Mandeville work of fiction your newspaper link refers to.
And on and on.
As I said it would be tedious and pointless to continue. You have however provided nothing that causes me to change my opinion that Savile will be exonerated in 25 years or so, once the hysteria has died down. As with the Rochdale/Orkney Satanic Panic.
It has done the job though Ecks; Saville is now a paedo in history, true or not.
I have to believe that, with the last decade’s growth of concepts of “privacy as a right”, there must exist some legal theory in your system which would support a claim against the rogue cop for releasing private information about something that was not a crime.
Of course, if he’s judgment-proof, why bother? There’s no libel or slander, as everything he disclosed appears to be true. The only claim available would have to center on the fact that he had no legal right to disclose private investigative data, so there would be no “clearing my name” purpose to such a lawsuit. The only goal would be monetary punishment to the cop.
“The only goal would be monetary punishment to the cop.”
That would certainly be true of a civil action, although there might be assets worth seizing, and there also could be some psychic benefit to prevailing in a public tribunal and ruining him financially. But surely this is a criminal matter as well; how can it not be illegal to disclose such information obtained in an official investigation?
@Niall Kilmartin
Since it’s Christmas I came across this Enoch Powell speech where he endorses yr views on the Union of the Crowns 1707 rather than the Acts of Union. As a plukey engineering apprentice I spent a months wages to see him lecture on economics: his technique using his flat midlands accent as an oratorical tool was quite mezmerizing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob6Wv_FPp7w
Oops: mesmerising.
Mr Ed (December 22, 2017 at 9:33 pm), regarding “he who alleges must prove”, remember the original comment, to which I replied, concerned a libel case (so ‘balance of probability’). That comment asserted we could say all this stuff about Savile only because he was dead. My reply was to the effect that if he were alive and sued me for libel because I repeated the allegations against him, I would be confident of the outcome – that is (IIUC the legalities) that I would expect for sure to walk free on the jury finding “fair comment on a matter of public interest” and would have good hopes of their finding for me on grounds of truth.
My defence would of course cover in detail a case or two that I personally find convincing, not every allegation ever made. (MeToo is not new, only the hashtag.) It would also glance at known and undoubted facts of Savile’s personality and lifestyle that rendered the allegations unsurprising. Long ago, in the 70s, on the very rare occasions when I thought about it, I felt that the outward blanks in Savile’s persona were likely to contain something. I might also try to convey to the jury my sense, when I watched Savile try to defend himself at the very end of his life (some allegations did not wait till his death to surface), that he was saying “prove it”.
In a sense, of course, none of us can ever be absolutely sure we are not mistaken about something we only really know through the public domain. I can’t absolutely guarantee that Saville won’t “be exonerated in 25 years”. But if anyone is offering evens odds (a.k.a ‘balance of probability’), I’ll happily bet a fiver.
I’m sure Hillary Clinton wishes no allegation against her could ever have been made until the maker was sure of proving it to the hilt in a court of law.
P.S. (to avoid confusion), it was commenter Mr Ecks (December 22, 2017 at 11:26 pm), not Mr Ed, who opined that Saville would actually be exonerated in our lifetimes. Mr Ed said “he who alleges must prove”.
OK Mr Kilmartin–which case or two do you find convincing ?
You might indeed be able to claim “fair comment on a public matter” in a hypothetical libel case but the rest of your piece seems to be standard “no smoke without fire” stuff. Because his innocence can’t be absolutely guaranteed. Which of course it can’t in he said/she saids. That’s why the marx-femms just love them.
So again I say which specific cases?
Let’s be clear: I find all I’ve looked at convincing, and my much older impression of Savile meant I was wholly unsurprised when this all became public. I grant the abstract possibility that the public furore may have attracted some MeToo-ers to the already-large throng.
I suppose one entry point into the large corpus of material is to look at why Louis Theroux felt it necessary to apologise to one lady in person and many others on air in his contrite programme. I hold no brief for Louis Theroux’s accuracy – the whole point of his mea culpa was that he challenged the late-in-life Savile over this but was bamboozled by him – but your reason for finding Savile more convincing than the lady – so much more that you expect his exoneration in 25 years – is …?
One of the many articles on the specific sub aspect of Louis’ investigation, failure to close, and apology is here. I chose that from many because it includes video of Savile fingering a girl’s bottom in a public space that includes her mother. “If they do these things in a green tree, what will they do in a dry?” – or, as an observer of one of Stalin’s show trials wondered, “How do these prosecutors, who snarl at and bully the accused in public, behave when no-one is watching.”
As Christmas approaches, I may be slow in any further replies (you likewise, of course).
Mr Kilmartin: As you say Christmas is here so I will answer in more detail later.
The link you provided I followed. As evidence or a connection to evidence it was not impressive.
There is a still photo of a young woman and Savile with his arm around her waist–I don’t see the hand being on her backside. Can’t see his other hand so can’t comment about that. His distance is close but I have hugged and been hugged by women friends at a similar distance without either party considering it “sexual assault”. Altho’ a YouTube vid is mentioned there is no link to it on the page. The only video is Theroux trying to cover his arse and assure everybody he is not any sort of dissenter from the “Savile=monster” panic line.
There is a link to another piece about Savile’s “My Knighthood got me off the hook” article. It is entirely innocuous. But by circular reasoning, once he has been denounced as King Paedo then everything he says or ever has said becomes (Global Warming style) proof that he is indeed the monster that he is said to be.
As for the Leeds Hospital report –well there is a vid of a female official gravely asserting all kinds of things about Savile which the Leeds hospital report claims are true. And –under the subjectivist credo of cultural Marxism (ie sex accusation against a–mostly white-male =proof of guilt) that might be so. But having read every word of the Leeds report I would beg to differ and will do so at greater length and with detail.
Later however–not over Christmas.
Johnathan Pearce writes:
And many witches, similarly accused by volume of claims, were burned at the stake or drowned. Very interestingly, the Witchcraft Act of 1735 was last used for prosecution in 1944. It was repealed in 1951.
Which means, I think, that we must each still fear the enthusiasms of Johnathon and his ilk – of vigilantes.
Best regards
Mr Ecks (December 23, 2017 at 3:43 pm), my link was merely meant to invite you (or any reader who wants to assess for themselves) to watch the documentary that it very briefly and only in part summarises. (I watched when the programme was shown.) A very minor aspect of that documentary is a video clip, from which the text article shows one still.
The lengthy programme shows interview with Savile denying allegations. It contains a long discussion, in her home, with one of his accusers. Other accusers also appear. You can compare and form an opinion – as I have. (If you prefer reading to watching, this longer article gives Louis’ own summary, but it still has far less info than the programme – and it is reporting, which you evidently distrust, whereas the programme shows both Savile and a few of his many accusers.)
From it and/or many other sources, you can learn that suspicion was following Savile long before his death, despite the BBC repeatedly dismissing it and not passing reports to the police, and despite the BBC’s hyping of him (and “My Knighthood”, which their support got for him) repeatedly causing people not to risk raising it.
On a more festive note, Sir James Savile’s legacy includes what to my mind was the greatest prank ever, on his former employer’s BBC Radio Ulster station. As background, Savile fronted in the 1970s a ‘wish fulfilment TV show’ called ‘Jim’ll Fix It’, which set children up with those who could get them doing something, e.g. visiting a football team. ‘Jim fixed it for me’ was the motto.
The prank involved a phone-in about the late Sir James and a listener texting in with some balance.
Niall’s points, such as his references to the Theroux comments, are well taken. Even if we remove some of the “me-too” complaints, it seems to me that there’s enough by way of substantial complaints, and from many people, to suggest Savile was indeed what I said he was. The best that Mr Ecks can do us vent and claim all his accusers are frauds. I’m unimpressed.
We have gone some way off the original point about a police grudge against a polio and abuse of process, however.
Mr Kilmartin, the documentary has been extensively debunked already.
I will get to it but not over the next three days.
If you have time and the inclination you might start with this site.
http://jimcannotfixthis.blogspot.co.uk/#!/2017/11/numbercruncher.html
There is a vast amount of material and I have to say the format –articles pop-up when you click but disappear if you accidently click outside the articles area–is a tad difficult. The material is excellent however.
You might also try the site of the late Anna Racoon. She debunks the Duncroft Home accusations very effectively.
https://annaraccoon.com/
“The best that Mr Ecks can do us vent and claim all his accusers are frauds. I’m unimpressed.”
I’m unimpressed that you’re unimpressed. Getting down to cases is where its at and –as Mr Kilmartin says–not over Xmas. Merely asserting that substantial cases exist, providing links that turn out to connect to the same old fact-free capers and adding a small scale version of “40 million Germans can’t be wrong” is not proof.
Mr Ecks, you’re annaracoon link says, “I didn’t bother to watch the rest of the programme – why waste my time on nonsense?”, which undermines one’s confidence in Anna Racoon’s thoroughness just a bit. (Let it be noted however that I similarly haven’t – at least yet – read the whole of her long site.) Thus the case she focusses on was not the one I mentioned towards the end of the programme. She insists angrily that a certain accuser was only two days shy of her 16th birthday, not aged 14, but herself mentioned not one specific date in all her angry description. She tells us the rules of the school forbade such visits – of course, school rules are never broken, nor would ever be winked at for such a great celebrity as Savile was at that time. She says she’s seen an old email from Kat to another pupil saying she had no memory of her time at Duncroft but quotes nothing from it and seems not to see how equally consistent such a thing is with Kat’s genuinely not remembering and Kat’s choosing a dismissive way of not discussing a place with ugly memories for her.
Perhaps Duncroft was indeed so effectively strict. Your other link states that Barnardos investigation found no evidence that Savile was allowed unsupervised access. I read right through that report. “From the 1970’s onwards … Barnardo’s had shifted away from authoritarianism and towards flexibility, away from rigidity and towards adaptability; away from evangelical Christianity and towards religious open mindedness. … The charity was now becoming more reliant on the public sector for its finances. By the end of the 1970’s statutory authorities were contributing around 50% of Barnardo’s total income.” I remember the 70s.
It may be that if Anna had calmed her rage and improved her reasoning powers, she could have written a more convincing post. She is calmer in her post’s comments where she is courteous to a newbie insulted by other commenters: “Given that I was one of the few people who was supposed to be in two of the places where this notorious ‘paedophile was taking his pick of young girls as though in a sweet shop’ I was more than a little bemused to realise that not only had I not been abused by him, I’d never set eyes on him…and knew without doubt that the original tale, the one on which the Exposure programme was predicated, from which flowed all the other claims and allegations, was a crock of shit.” But she fails to make me know more than that she knew that excited newspaper ‘sweet shop’ headlines were exaggerated.
Your other site presents arguments that the inconsistent newspaper headlines about the numbers of Savile’s victims are exaggerated. Certainly Louis programme interviewed a hand count of victims, not 1350.
One side effect emerged from my checking around all this. this article appears to show that my belief that I’d win on grounds of truth in a libel case was plausible; FWIW, Kat Ward did.
[The first version of this comment miswrote the name of Duncroft school as ‘Dunmore’ school. I corrected the error after Mr Ecks pointed it out.]
Christmas Eve.
1–My Link does not take you to the AR piece you quote. You picked it out yourself re Theroux. I did not specify that AR debunked the Theroux capers. I said she did a good job on Duncroft. Which she did. You have skimmed a tiny amount of material re Duncroft and you now pronounce. Somewhat premature to be judging AR’s “reasoning powers” when you deploy your own on the basis of next to nothing. Apart from the highly improbable testimonies of a number of accusers there is ZERO evidence that Savile was ever anywhere near Duncroft prior to 1974. Other than hot air spilled decades after the supposed events.
2– It’s DunCROFT not DunMORE which suggests that your own powers of observation and reading comprehension have hardly been marshalled to the task.
3 Your dismissal of years of material on Moor Larkins site is cursory –again you have hardly bothered. Given the short time elapsed between your posts you simply could not have.
4- The woman in the article you link to is—well let’s say that the story she imparts is open to some very considerable questions. As for the legal case–yeah if you bullshit with sufficient skill you too can have some bunch of lawdogs decide you and your claims SOUND plausible. Especially if you make your move in the middle of a panic in which every media panic-peddler in the world has been proclaiming the “truth” of evidence-free claims (such as hers) in every channel possible for several years.
I’m thro with this thread and half-arsed back and forth. I think I will try to write up as much as I can and get it published in some form somewhere. It will take time. Then some real debate or examination might be possible. I am not a professional writer or researcher but given the lies that so called “professionals” have beamed around the world I can hardly do worse.
I’m also through with you Mr Ecks. I haven’t seen you write anything my way of substantive disproof of those who have made complaints. Have you directly challenged any of them personally?
But you of course have intimate inside knowledge of events and can confirm their veracity.
Several claims have been directly debunked. The Broadmoor caper, the 10 year old supposedly threatened with sodomy in the back of Savile’s Rolls, the various claims of being raped and abused by Savile at the BBC TV Centre during filming of TOTPs there 1966-69 (when it was never filmed at the TV Centre during that time), Duncroft etc etc. Every case that I know of where facts exist to take the claim outside of solely he said/she said the facts fall in Saviles favour.I’m not spending Christmas Day typing up details for you.
WTF would meeting any of them personally have to do with anything? If I meet some flat earthers and marvel at their absolutely genuine strength of conviction is that all that should be required for their claims to declared true?
The police and the hospital authorities who produced their various “reports” actually did NOTHING more than gather up the claims of “victims” and publish them without ANY attempt at verification in the normal manner of seeking objective support for such claims. Because “ibeliveher”. The Police claimed that since Savile was dead and beyond prosecution there was no point in wasting money doing a proper investigation. That didn’t stop them releasing a load of unchecked and unverified claims as if they were true and helping to boost the panic.
In the Leeds Hospital report for example there is a claim that a 16 year old girl was walking down a Leeds Hospital corridor with two female friends when Savile grabbed her –in front of an entire corridor of people as well as her friends-and stuck his tongue down her throat and held her in that state for 30 seconds before letting her go. I am not a “trained” investigator but my first question would have been “Are your friends still alive and who/where are they please?”. Because I would go and ask them. If they back her account then it becomes all the more credible. But the Leeds report does not even mention that such a thought crossed the account-gatherers minds. Possibly because facts, evidence, witnesses are wicked white patriarchal evil. Thus even on a very rare occasion that corroboration might have been obtained for a claim ( in a mass of “she said/he didn’t get a chance to say anything cos he’s dead” claims)that possibility was ignored.
It is likely still far too early to take on an established supposed “truth” such as the “evil” of Savile.
That’s it. I’m wasting no more of Christmas.
Mr Ecks,
Yes, the vast number of accusations are all fakes. Made up. Hysteria.
Seriously, even given healthy scepticism, does nothing give you pause? Not one?
We landed on the Moon, by the way.
And have you heard of the original American Satanic sex/murder claims from the late 80s ? Where at one time 60-odd folk were claiming to have been present at ceremonious where various babies were murdered. Not one of those claims was ever found to have the slightest objective support. Most of those making the claim provided no factual info when pressed on the matter. Those few who attempted to provide details–usually vague–produced nothing that the combined efforts of several US LEA’s could find the slightest evidence for.
There is an –almost–amusing sound clip on Youtube somewhere with one of these supposed witnesses being questioned. If memory serves it goes thus:
” Q–What was the name of your Satanic Master?
A–I don’t remember
Q–You don’t remember the name of a man who involved you in the murder of children?
A-I’ve had a breakdown”
Yes indeed.
Rather than the Moon Landing Mr Pearce consider this: How many of the –by now–thousands of accounts of UFO Abduction do you believe? Thousands of entirely separate people all over the world surely can’t all be caught up in some weird panic making all sorts of allegations (that–mostly–can’t be checked) ?
I have very little time for the former First Secretary of State. But I have even less time for those who wantonly violate the Bill of Rights. We don’t have much of a constitution, here, now, anymore. Which is why it is extremely important that we preserve, protect, and defend such constitution as remains.