Kelvin MacKenzie and the 1988 ‘Brighton: Town of Shame’ editorial

There is a major discussion pending about collusion between police/authorities and the tabloid element that brazenly exploits and corrupts them. I speak not just of Hillsborough but a variety of instances in recent times (example). However, today you will have to settle for some mere fact-checking from this little black duck.

Last night, hundreds of people were on Twitter discussing the merits (or otherwise) of Kelvin MacKenzie, and this graphic turned up of an editorial allegedly penned by MacKenzie in his capacity as editor of The Sun in 1988*:

scan of alleged Kelvin MacKenzie editorial

I used TinEye to locate this instance of the same graphic/editorial, and it cites a local source (Peter Crisp) who would be entirely likely to keep and distribute material like this.

One might simply ask Kelvin MacKenzie and/or someone at The Sun but I expect they’re all very busy hiding under the bed at the moment, so please drop me a line (email), tweet at me (@bloggerheads) or comment (below/reddit) if you think you can help me to determine the authenticity of this editorial.

(Also, drop me a line if you’ve any word on the alleged second coming of Jesus of Nazareth, especially if you know the venue, as I want to book early for a good seat. If I’m going to heckle, I want to do it from the front row.)

[*In October 1984 the IRA bombed the Grand Hotel in Brighton during the Tory conference with the intention of assassinating then-PM Margaret Thatcher and/or members of her cabinet. The Tory conference returned to Brighton in 1988.]

[Psst! If you’re not in a position to help today, you can still do something nifty on Twitter. Drop @kelvinmackenzie a friendly word; the poor chap’s been widely mistaken for a former editor of a certain barrel-scraping tabloid.]








Posted in Christ..., Humanity, Old Media, Rupert 'The Evil One' Murdoch, Tories! Tories! Tories! | Comments Off on Kelvin MacKenzie and the 1988 ‘Brighton: Town of Shame’ editorial

Grant Shapps is still a sock-puppeting loser

I blogged about Grant Shapps a few years ago. Back then, he sought to silence some serious questions about sock puppetry by claiming his YouTube account was hacked, and his final line in the sand was a claim that the alleged hacking incident was being investigated by YouTube/Google. I asked Grant Shapps about that last night. Here is the question he chose not to answer:

You claimed that Google/YouTube launched an investigation into what you alleged to be the hacking of your YouTube account. Nothing ever came of that. Would you care to explain why, and if you ever reported the matter to police?

During that incident I became aware of Grant Shapp’s wider use of alter egos, including ‘Michael Green’ of howtocorp.com (and howtobouncebackfromrecession.com, howtostartaforum.com, howtomarketwithtwitter.com, etc.) but today I’d really like to know more about his relationship with ‘Chuck Champion’ of howtopickupwomennow.com:

howtopickupwomennow.com

Perhaps Grant Shapps will inform us that the connection is ‘merely’ that howtopickupwomennow.com was one of the advertisers on the site savemysurgery.com, but the design, code and marketing and copy styles are identical to his* other ‘get results quickly without really trying’ scams, and his past behaviour (re: sock-puppetry denials) will count against him.

(*Yes, yes, yes. The paperwork shows the business is now in his wife’s name. But the advertising sales copy still live on many sites declares products to be the work of ‘Michael Green’, a “Member of Parliament”.)

Further, even if Grant Shapps can put a convincing amount of distance between himself and ‘Chuck Champion’, he has some serious questions to answer about site reputations he builds as an MP and then goes on to ‘cash in’ so it can be used as a patch on a two-bit ‘content’ farm where keyword-weighted links are sold for money. Shapps cannot pretend not to know what an online reputation is worth; too many of his products rely on teaching people how to falsify one.

I asked Grant Shapps about that last night. Here is the question he chose not to answer:

Where precisely do you declare the earnings from the keyword-weighted promotional links hosted on savemysurgery.com, and would you care to name any other party-political/campaign websites that you were involved in that went on to be exploited commercially in a similar fashion?

If I weren’t so preoccupied with other matters right now, I’d have a slew of other questions for Grant Shapps to read and ignore, but for now I leave you with this trail of scrummy crumbs in the form of yet another question:

Do you deny authorship of any of the following edits to Wikipedia? (note: each page contains a list)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Historyset
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Hackneymarsh
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/217.155.38.72

(Psst! Over to you, Grant. Or Michael. Or Sebastian. Or Chuck. Or whatever your name is today. I’d like us all to be very clear on your view on the use of false identities for commercial and political purposes, just on the off-chance that you’re put in a position where you’re the main point of contact for complaints about sock puppetry from Conservative MPs, fundraisers, activists and what have you. Because I have just such a complaint, and it’s a whopper.)

UPDATE (12 Sep) – A considerable amount of time has passed since I put these questions to Grant Shapps, and the lack of any denial (while he was quick to produce a receipt proving he had worn a £4 tie) has cost him dearly. I have been very clear about what is indicitive and what is conclusive, but of course when valid questions are dodged, you will find conclusions being drawn regardless. Hell, I’m one of the people who drew my own conclusions after a few days. However, I should point out that Grant Shapps has now very clearly denied any level of involvement in howtopickupwomennow.com and I’m not only willing to accept this, I am also personally satisfied that there is no significance to the delay in his issuing this denial. I am at present seeking further information about savemysurgery.com, and how/why it was turned into a patch on someone’s content farm carrying an keyword-weighted link to ‘Chuck Champion’ and others, so that question stands, but in my view we are no longer in a place when one can fairly ask Shapps if he is/was ‘Chuck Champion’ of howtopickupwomennow.com and/or carry on as if that question stands unanswered. Cheers all.








Posted in Tories! Tories! Tories! | 9 Comments

God(s) Save the Queen: British national anthem lyrics for non-Christians

As a public service during the Olympics I am publishing the lyrics that I use each time the band plays ‘God Save the Queen’; it is suitable for agnostics, atheists, and even people of alternative faiths (i.e. so they can call on their alleged god to save our glorious Queen for the very first time ever).

For spontaneity, ask every deity;
‘God(s) save the Queen’.
Brahma & Ek Onkar,
Odin & Zeus & Ra,
Yahweh, Baal, Arinna;
God(s) Save the Queen!

(Obviously, there are other deities not listed here that are alleged to have the same magic-monkey superpowers from which all authority stems, but they just weren’t omnipotent enough to direct my mind to include them.)








Posted in Christ... | 1 Comment

Barely-literate passive-aggressive bigot WLTM xenophobic mob. Object: acrimony

I found this letter (embedded below) pinned to the wall of a bus stop shelter in Shalford (Surrey, UK). Further examples have been posted to local community messageboards that are unmarked, suggesting that the ‘pikey’ changes are by someone who agrees with the sentiment, but thinks ‘pikey’ to be a more apt term than ‘gypsy’.

(That said, the repeated/matching error in apostrophe deployment hints at the exciting possibility that this could be the nearest one might hope to get to a signature by the original artist, which would make my sample a collector’s item.)

The myths, distortions and prejudice apparent in this letter from an unknown member of the public remind me of certain campaigning materials local Conservatives have yet to explain (more), and I would dare to suggest the kind of unhealthy outburst apparent in this letter is encouraged by the kind of bigotry and dishonesty that Guildford Conservatives continue to pretend never happens/happened on their watch.

Indeed, some of the serving councillors this open letter targets will know the people/attitudes I speak of and how little they have done to discourage this kind of behaviour and worse from their fellow Conservatives, but I doubt any of them will admit it, even when dealing with the entirely predictable consequences of it.

scan of letter from local bigot

UPDATE – The incident has now been reported to Surrey Police, who kindly confirmed the appearance of similar notices in other villages, and advised me that Waverley Borough Council were aware.








Posted in Anne Milton, Humanity, Tories! Tories! Tories! | 1 Comment

New evidence: Dennis Rice the sole author of @tabloidtroll

———

IMPORTANT UPDATE: 2014 post detailing how Dennis Rice reacted to the evidence that he was the author of ‘@tabloidtroll’

———

A few months ago, I asked Dennis Rice if he was the person behind @tabloidtroll, a twitter account used to smear a range of witnesses to the Leveson Inquiry.

His response was to deny the allegation, but leave room for some kind of technical/distant association with the account. Just in case.

However… before I asked Dennis Rice about this allegation via email, a DM was sent to the account @tabloidtroll; the recipient of that message (i.e. the account holder) then followed a unique link in that message, and even replied to the DM indicating he had done so. An IP address was recorded during that procedure.

Minutes later, when Dennis Rice replied to my question about allegations, he revealed the IP address he was using to access the internets at that same time

The account holder of @tabloidtroll had precisely the same IP address as that used by Dennis Rice to reply to my email.

I am not inclined to reference/reveal any potentially sensitive data/details, but I can assure you that the odds of these IP addresses being identical by chance are very, very, very, very long.

Dennis Rice responded to this by making false/misleading claims to and on behalf of Thames Valley Police in an attempt to portray my actions/questions as criminal (while simultaneously denying the significance of the evidence and sometimes even demanding that I publish the same evidence that he elsewhere accused me of sharing inappropriately).

Thames Valley Police responded by dragging their heels and “collating papers” for many weeks before finally confirming that I was never a suspect, while neatly avoiding any comment on Dennis Rice demonstrably implying/claiming otherwise on their behalf.

Dennis Rice responded to this by making a further complaint almost immediately, and again making false/misleading claims to and on behalf of Thames Valley Police in a further attempt to portray my actions as criminal that followed exactly the same pattern as before.

Yet again, Thames Valley Police responded by dragging their heels and “collating papers” for many weeks before finally confirming that I was never a suspect, while neatly avoiding any comment on Dennis Rice demonstrably implying/claiming otherwise on their behalf.

Twice now Thames Valley Police have allowed this tabloid hack to carry on like this without challenge; they even refused to accept or discuss evidence of Rice misleading them and/or making misleading claims on their behalf so he might better intimidate myself and other critics (and I may yet publish some of this evidence if Rice denies/downplays the bullying he engaged in while claiming to be a victim of bullies.)

Further, Thames Valley Police offer no comment on some people’s reactions to the false allegations made against me in their name. One man who allowed himself to be convinced by Rice’s lies offered to come around to confront me personally about my ‘cowardice’, to see if I was a “man or a mouse”. Not as any kind of threat, you understand, just so he could know whether to bring cheese. Ha. ha. Ha.

It was during this kind offer of a personal confrontation that I briefly walked away from the matter and blogging/tweeting generally last month, despite having new and conclusive evidence to hand; I was just about to go on holiday, and did not want some weak-minded dimwit turning up at my house while I was relaxing at home with my family (or, worse, away somewhere).

Today, I returned from holidays, announced I was back on deck, then mentioned that further @tabloidtroll evidence was pending.

Dennis Rice reacted by deliberately trying to trigger the same ‘face to face confrontation’ response from the same damn dimwit; Rice also made a range of the usual claims designed to portray me as a fraud and/or otherwise undermine the IP address evidence that confirmed him as the main account holder for @tabloidtroll

It is here that we turn to the new evidence, and balance it against what has already been published:

The evidence I gathered initially (link) indicated Dennis Rice as the main account holder for @tabloidtroll.

Putting aside what Rice’s further public/private reaction(s) have indicated/revealed about authorship, this always left room for the possibility of multiple authors and/or Rice being the account holder and not the main author(s) for some reason; Rice certainly claimed/implied several times that @tabloidtroll was the work of more than one person.

(Here I grant Roy Greenslade a slow handclap for immediately falling for one of these charades and endorsing a day-old site from an unknown author… over an article on the subject of media standards, no less. Roy didn’t correct his idiocy, by the way; he ran away from thread, leaving me/others to deal with the fallout, and repeatedly allowing Rice to pretend that he had been legitimised by the Guardian’s “endorsement”. Thanks, Roy. You started out with a single act of mere idiocy, but then you were so afraid of looking foolish you acted like a complete bastard. I doubt I shall be trusting you again now I know how reluctant you are to admit error and/or correct diary items even when you know you are in the wrong.)

Judging by his outbursts earlier today, Dennis is expecting me to release this same IP data today and/or make reference to further IP data today.

Sorry, but no. Any further IP data would leave us in much the same place as the above.

What I publish today is not IP data or anything to do with it.

What I publish today is professional linguistic analysis of the Twitter output of @tabloidtroll compared to the Twitter output of @dennisricemedia (Dennis Rice’s ‘main’/name account):

Report of Dr Nicci MacLeod: Comparison of tweets from tabloidtroll to tweets from dennisricemedia for evidence of linguistic consistency

My sincere thanks go to Dr Nicci MacLeod (Research Associate) and Dr Tim Grant (Director) at the Centre for Forensic Linguistics at Aston University for their time, effort and expertise.

The main findings of the analysis are as follows:

There are multiple significant points of consistency between the output of Dennis Rice and ‘@tabloidtroll’. There are NO significant points of inconsistency.

The evidence I publish today (link) indicates (a) that Dennis Rice authored the majority of content for @tabloidtroll*, and (b) it is very unlikely that there was ever more than one author.

In much the same way that he hilariously declared that ‘lots of people have IP addresses’, I expected Dennis Rice would respond to this evidence by claiming that ‘lots of people say LOL’, but Dr MacLeod addressed this very same issue in her covering letter…

Nicci MacLeod: ‘it’s quite important that we make clear that it’s not the features themselves that are individuating, but the combinations thereof that indicate possibility of shared authorship – I reiterate this a couple of times in the report but I would say it’s pretty crucial that the message gets through, or we risk the inevitable “millions of people use lol and :)”, etc.’

… and shortly after we agreed on a suitable analogy to put that into context:

Tim Ireland: ‘Would this be an accurate analogy? “It wasn’t the 7 or the 12 or the 25 or 29 or the 36 or the 42 that won me the lottery. Lots of people had those. But I had all six.”…’

Nicci: ‘The lottery analogy is absolutely perfect! There were a few author-internal inconsistencies (no more than would be expected)…’

What this means is that Dennis Rice is demonstrably the main account holder of @tabloidtroll AND the original/primary author. I have forensic evidence to support both control of the account, and authorship of the bulk of the content.

It is also worth stressing that not only has Dennis Rice lied about his authorship of @tabloidtroll, but he’s banked so much on this deceit that his extraordinary distortions form part of two consecutive attempts to have me prosecuted (and others fired or otherwise disciplined) for daring to say so.

The upshot of this is even if you believe Rice/@tabloidtroll has a moral/legal right to smear and bully people anonymously, you can’t trust a damn thing he claims to have witnessed, because it can be demonstrated quite clearly that he is capable of the most extraordinary distortions. Anecdotal evidence from someone like this has no value, even if you do turn a blind eye to undisclosed figure(s) paid to this demonstrable liar by Rupert Murdoch’s News International.

(*For material up to and including the initial outing and a short period afterwards. It would not surprise me in the least if Rice has convinced others to chip in to a limited extent since then. I can think of at least one person stupid enough to do this.)

Psst! It was while I was sitting around waiting for Thames Valley Police to do their damn job that I decided to investigate their own web conduct. Unsurprisingly, a lackadaisical attitude to online bullying is evident in this series of anonymous Wikipedia edits and their response to my complaint about it.

UPDATE (7pm) – Dennis Rice has, through his @tabloidtroll site, made several ‘straw man’ arguments in an attempt to undermine the report by claiming the source data is flawed. For example, he claims the researcher’s data is undermined by their saying there are 600 tweets in their data set while there are less than 400 tweets currently listed/apparent in the live account. But no tweets were ‘invented’ for the data set, despite what Dennis Rice might imply; the difference in two numbers is perhaps likely due to RTs not being counted, or perhaps some vast conspiracy. Maybe (just maybe) someone has been deleting some old entries. I’d check it out if I thought this was anything other than the flailings of a desperate liar. The question Dennis Rice really wants to ask is how I got my hands on this data during the period when he had rendered the @dennisricemedia tweets inaccessible to the public or any publicly-accessible cache/archive. Right now he’s too busy trying to goad me into publishing sensitive/IP data. Again.

———

IMPORTANT UPDATE: 2014 post detailing how Dennis Rice reacted to the evidence that he was the author of ‘@tabloidtroll’

———








Posted in Old Media, Rupert 'The Evil One' Murdoch, Teh Interwebs, The Political Weblog Movement | 10 Comments

Dennis Rice and the @TabloidTroll Twitter account

From the outset, I would like to make clear that I have both a legitimate personal and public interest argument for outing the author of the Twitter account @TabloidTroll (aka ‘tabloidman’) in that the account has been used (a) to libel me, and (b) to engage in abusive and circumstantial ad hominem attacks on a series of witnesses/contributors to the Leveson Inquiry, including Richard Peppiatt, Tom Watson, Hugh Grant, and those attached to the Guardian, the Media Standards Trust, and the ‘Hacked Off’ campaign.

The author of the @TabloidTroll account portrays himself as an ‘industry mole’ and this kind of behaviour as ‘whistle blowing’, even to the extent of claiming that outing him would be a criminal offence under something he calls the ‘Whistleblower Act’. This is a risk I am willing to take, not least because the Whistleblower Protection Act only applies in the United States, and though here in the UK we do have something called the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, it has no bearing on my position, or what I am about to disclose.

Last Sunday, a Direct Message was sent to the registered account holder for @TabloidTroll. It contained a unique URL leading to a page on my website. The recipient visited that URL, and my site, and replied to the DM confirming that he had done this.

Very soon after this, I emailed Dennis Rice of Dennis Rice Media Limited (Twitter: @DennisRiceMedia, Site: moneyforyourstory.com, Company No: 06646525) and asked him for his response to the already-public allegations that he was the author of @TabloidTroll.

The IP address of the person who received the Direct Message for @TabloidTroll (and subsequently visited my site) was exactly the same as that used by Dennis Rice to read and respond to my email.

Here we turn to key extracts* from the relevant correspondence, and I will remind you that at this stage, Dennis Rice is only responding to the already-public allegations that he is the author of Tabloid Troll:

(*There were further questions put to Dennis Rice that I choose not to publish at this time, mainly to keep this article focused on the core evidence, and not what I may or may not suspect about motive, or his involvement in further anonymous accounts.)

Tim Ireland:
Dennis… Do you have any comment to make about your alleged involvement with the Twitter account ‘@TabloidTroll’? On what basis would you claim/imply that the anonymity of someone behind an account like @TabloidTroll is protected by the Whistleblower Protection Act?

Dennis Rice:
Dear Tim – I am of course aware of Tabloidman, as I follow his/her tweets. I certainly am not, nor have ever been, him/her. Any suggestion that I am would be both untrue and damaging to my freelance employment in the national press and to my personal reputation. As regards the Whistleblower Act I have to confess I am unaware of such an Act – though I am prepared to take you on your word that such an Act exists. I have not the faintest idea how one could apply it to Twitter… Hope this clears this up for you. Best Regards, Dennis.

Tim Ireland:
Thank you, Dennis, for your reply. I would like to be very clear on your denial, if you don’t mind… Would you consider it correct and accurate to say that aside from following the account on Twitter using @dennisricemedia, you have NO connection to the @TabloidTroll account at all? That it’s not run by you, or anyone close/known to you? That’s it’s not an account you have any access to in any way?

Dennis Rice:
Dear Tim – I am not Tabloidman, or whatever he/she is called. I repeat that stating I am would be profoundly damaging. That is all I am going to say on the matter. My lawyers will deal with anything anyone would be foolish enough to print – alleging or otherwise – that I am. Thanks for your time.

Note that the second denial pulls up short of denying a connection to the @TabloidTroll account that might include a claim that an unnamed ‘friend’ runs the account (i.e. in much the same way that Andrew Gilligan claimed that an unnamed “partner” was behind a sock puppet using the name ‘kennite’ to praise his work and attack his enemies).

Note also that at this stage, Dennis Rice has no clue that the IP data he has just provided indicates that he is the main account holder for @TabloidTroll when it is balanced against the Direct Message to that account and the subsequent visit to a unique URL on my site.

So on Monday I emailed Dennis Rice, as per my obligations as a publisher, in an attempt to disclose and discuss not the mere allegation of his connection to the @TabloidTroll account, but the evidence tying him to it:

Tim Ireland:
My apologies for bothering you with a further question, but my website statistics show a visit from your IP/device yesterday. Would you mind awfully confirming which page(s) you visited, when you visited them, and how you came to be aware of the URL you visited first last night?

The email was read, but Dennis Rice offered no reply.

However, soon after this, the @TabloidTroll account was used to make contact with the Twitter account that sent the Direct Message containing the URL/visit that Dennis Rice had just been asked about; this message from @TabloidTroll requested the phone number of the sender of the Direct Message (!) and when this was refused with a counter offer of email correspondence, contact ceased.

So on Wednesday I contacted Dennis Rice again by email:

Tim Ireland:
Dear Dennis – Let us both acknowledge the reason why you have no ready answer for your visit to my site on Sunday and simultaneously cut to the chase: I intend to publish an article naming you as the person behind @tabloidtroll on Twitter and would be grateful if you could answer the following questions… [snip questions]… I require a response by 5pm on Thursday 27th April 2012.

The email was read (this time from three vastly different locations in the UK), but there was no reply.

By this time, Richard Peppiatt and Tom Watson had been advised of my findings, and my intention to publish them.

On Friday, the @TabloidTroll account was used to have yet another anonymous pop at Tom Watson, and Tom responded with a probing question based on his knowledge of an undisclosed settlement paid to Dennis Rice by News International. Key tweets from the relevant exchange appear below.

(If you are a regular here at Bloggerheads, you are about to experience a glorious pay-off. Pun intended.)

tom_watson ‏ – @tabloidtroll when did you last receive a payment from news international?

tabloidtroll – @tom_watson saying I am in the pay of News Int is also actionable. Whatever happened to the days when our MPs had brains? Deep sigh.

tom_watson – @tabloidtroll Did you not get your settlement for appearing in Glenn’s notebooks? No need to answer.

tabloidtroll – @tom_watson @dennisricemedia Ha, not you too? Ricey told me about the loon stalking him. Be careful of the company you keep.

tabloidtroll – @tom_watson Think Thames Valley Police will want to talk to you. They are currently investigating your (clearly unchecked) source.

1. ‘Ricey’. Because they’re mates. Not the same person, but mates. (rolls eyes) On that note, here’s one of my very favourite tweets; ‘Ricey’ bigging it up for his old mate @TabloidTroll (in reponse to a series of tweets about ‘Hacked Off’ including ugly insinuations about the Guardian and the Scott Trust, the Financial Times and Pearson, the Media Standards Trust, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs):

dennisricemedia – I think @tabloidtroll is raising some interesting questions tonight. We shouldn’t have a body asking for more accountability yet not itself

2. I immediately checked with Thames Valley Police and I can confirm what most regulars will already suspect, given the reliable patterns of behaviour exhibited by those who seek to gain personally or politically from the use of multiple/false identities:

a) Yes, after initially denying it, when confronted with hard evidence linking him to a web account used to bully people anonymously, Dennis Rice went to police and accused me of criminal behaviour. The exact nature of the allegation is unknown at this stage, but it would appear to centre on harassment, and not the phantom Whistleblower Act.

b) Yes, Dennis Rice also declared there to be a police investigation in progress (implying some level of guilt on my part) when all that had happened at that stage was he had contacted police, and his complaint had been logged by police.

Should an officer be assigned to the matter on the basis that a potential crime is suspected, I look forward to discussing the matter with them and inviting them to investigate the matter so fully as to determine the likely authorship of the @tabloidtroll account for themselves… assuming that Lord Justice Leveson doesn’t take an interest before then.

Well, I’ve kept you long enough already. Those who are uncertain about the full ramifications of Dennis Rice being intimately involved with the @TabloidTroll account (if not the sole author of same) are invited to search for ‘tabloidtroll’ using Snapbird (which will give you access to some 2000+ tweets much faster than Twitter will) and comparing the output to that of ‘dennisricemedia’.

You may also choose to balance this against the kind of material Dennis Rice produces and the publications he sells this material to.

On a final note, touching for but a moment on my own chosen profession, you are also invited to witness the first tweets by Dennis Rice and gaze in wonder at the emergence of an SEO and online marketing genius (link):

Dennis Rice tweets

Cheers all.

UPDATE – The twitter account previously at @DennisRiceMedia has been renamed and rendered private, robbing the public of the capacity to balance that output against that of @TabloidTroll. Aw.

UPDATE (24 May) – Near to a month has been wasted while I have patiently waited for Thames Valley Police to respond to a complaint from Dennis Rice, but I rather suspect that this was the point of the exercise. Through @tabloidtroll, Dennis even declared there to be an investigation in progress when there was no investigation (i.e. as if his call to police triggered an immediate response that somehow established my guilt). Here’s a sample of relevant tweets:

Tabloid Troll making untrue claims on behalf of police

Technically, an investigation did take place very recently (and very briefly), but in the words of Thames Valley Police I was “not a suspect” and they had “no intention of interviewing me or anything like that”. So, now that Thames Valley Police have established what any experienced reporter should have known all along, I present to you the complete and unedited contents of the email from me that Dennis Rice portrayed as a ‘nuisance message’ before pretending that police suspected my acts to be criminal in nature:


To: Dennis Rice
From: Tim Ireland
Date: Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 1:14 PM

Dear Dennis,

Let us both acknowledge the reason why you have no ready answer for your visit to my site on Sunday and simultaneously cut to the chase:

I intend to publish an article naming you as the person behind @tabloidtroll on Twitter and would be grateful if you could answer the following questions:

1. Have you received payments from any subsidiary or associated companies of News Corporation in each/either of the last two years?

2. You were named as a target for Glenn Mulcaire. Have you received any out of court settlements from News Corporation or subsidiary or associated companies? If yes, did you sign a confidentiality agreement?

3. Have you been commissioned to write articles, provide commentary or produce content for social media regarding the hacking scandal and the people involved with the investigation?

4. Have you been contracted to work for any PR companies who are contracted to News Corporation or any of its subsidiary or associated companies?

5. Is there anything else you would like to say regarding your decision to establish a pseudonymous twitter account?

6. To what extent were you inspired by Glen Jenvey in your ‘sell your story’ initiative, which you must recognise is very similar to his?
(Note: Jenvey began sellyourstory.org in July 2008, I reported that initiative on my site in January 2009, and moneyforyourstory.com was registered in February 2009)

And, finally:

7. Would you care to clarify or retract your remarks – published through the @tabloidtroll account – about my “sinister” conduct as a blogger, the “little dodgy stunts” you claim to have seen evidence of in multiple copies of Private Eye, and my behaviour toward Patrick Mercer in relation to what you describe as the “manipulation” of an unnamed “far right activist”?

I require a response by 5pm on Thursday 27th April 2012.

Regards,

Tim Ireland

For the record, the only answer Dennis Rice has offered to any of these questions is; “Help! Police!”

Well, police don’t think it’s any of their business, despite what Mr Rice claimed through the ‘Tabloid Troll’ account, so he is invited once again to answer any or all of them.

(Sorry it’s in public this time, Dennis old bean, but you brought this on yourself. If you want the luxury of private questions or advance notice of anything I intend to publish about you in future, the onus is on you to either clarify your position regarding your willingness to accept correspondence, or provide me with contact details for a lawyer or equally appropriate third party. You know how to reach me.)








Posted in Old Media, Rupert 'The Evil One' Murdoch, Teh Interwebs, The Political Weblog Movement | 13 Comments

To: Detective Chief Inspector Steve Vesztrocy, Bedfordshire Police

The following is the full and unedited text of an email sent to the named officer and the media department for Bedfordshire Police in response to their repeated failure/refusal to take action against false allegations made by the Conservative MP Nadine Dorries (and others) against me (and others).

Sir,

I have on multiple occasions requested from Bedfordshire Police the detail of several false, damaging and often downright dangerous allegations made against me, the majority of which have since been proven to be innacurate accounts and gross distortions where they have not been suspected lies if not demonstrable lies. You have shown no interest in any of these findings, despite multiple indicators that you have been lied to by a Member of Parliament who you know damn well has repeatedly gone on to completely misrepresent the outcome of an investigation by your officers for entirely political purposes.

(You even appear unwilling to ask a single question of a third party that would quickly establish that this MP definitely lied to you. An initial failure to ask this question might indicate incompetence; a refusal to ask it stinks of corruption.)

Among the false allegations passed to Bedfordshire Police; fabricated evidence with the obvious intention of give people the false idea that I am clinically psychotic, and a danger to others.

After failing to disclose an instance of this being passed directly to your investigating officer(s) during an investigation, Bedfordshire Police then failed to disclose it again in response to a legitimate subject access request after that investigation, and you now claim that you cannot disclose any detail about its source because of a further investigation.

If this fabricated evidence has any bearing on your current investigation, then why are you not investigating its origins?

If it it not relevant to your current investigation, then on what grounds do you refuse disclosure today?

I believe this evidence has a direct bearing on a current investigation by Surrey Police; it forms part of my complaint, and I would like to know on what grounds you refuse me the data I require to make them fully aware of its significance. This point is epecially important given that Terry Davis appears to have passed it to Surrey Police minus any real context (after making no sincere attempt to determine its origins), and they failed to investigate it as a result.

Like you, Surrey Police also refused to disclose this fabricated evidence to me in response to a subject access request under the Data Protection Act, and had I not pressed the matter, I would never have discovered that Bedfordshire Police were aware of three items of evidence where previously I was only aware of one.

When Terry Davis passed this data to Surrey Police, he said that it was passed to him at the tail end of his investigation; he did not appear to disclose the context in which it was sent, or give any indication about who might have sent it to him. If he did, then Surrey Police have some serious questions to answer about their failure to investigate, but of course I cannot call them on that while you continue to obfuscate.

You should already know the answers to the relevant questions I asked you about this fabricated evidence; I asked them weeks ago. You had no answer then, and today you sound disturbingly like a panicked MP at a certain hustings event.

On that note, I will close by also asking an additional question:

I presented to Terry Davis audio evidence that I specifically advised the Chair of the relevant Flitwick hustings about the broadcast she claimed to have no knowledge of. Can you explain to me why there is no mention of this in the resulting report?

Please be advised that I plan to publish this letter in full at 4pm today if I do not receive a reply that I believe to be earnest and adequate.

Tim Ireland

And so here we are. I got a (one-line) reply, but I do not believe it to be earnest or adequate.

Plus, there’s a bonus punchline; Bedfordshire Police today announced that someone else who made false allegations has been charged with wasting police time and given a fixed penalty notice… but local MP Nadine Dorries has so far got off scot-free. See if you can guess why.








Posted in Tories! Tories! Tories! | 1 Comment

Sir Douglas Morpeth & the corruption of Shamley Green Conservatives

In late 2006, two Conservative activists including an executive with a local fundraising group Guildford Conservatives sought to anonymously smear an opponent as a paedophile, and me as an unfit parent and an undesirable alien with commercial interests in pornography. Their names: Mike Chambers and Dennis Paul.

I complained to Conservative HQ and David Cameron’s office at the time, but – quite incredibly – the matter was referred back to the same body (Guildford Conservatives) for action. Unsurprisingly, the local MP Anne Milton and then-Chairman Jonathan Lord took no action. When confronted about this, Jonathan Lord initially claimed nothing was done because I didn’t put my complaint in writing (!) and later said that the whole matter was addressed to some extent, but only ‘informally’ and ‘off the books’… but he also admitted that essentially nothing was really done about it because local elections were in progress by the time my complaints reached him (in early 2007).

Ultimately, the whole thing was swept under the carpet. Crucially, no signal was sent out to local activists that this kind of conduct would not be tolerated. Worse, Dennis Paul sought to explain the evidence against him with false accusations of criminal behaviour that Mike Chambers has since testified were widely accepted as true in that local circle of Conservative fundraisers.

So it should come as no surprise to you to find that in 2009, two years after what can only be described as a cover-up, almost exactly the same thing happened again, again with me as a target, again involving a fundraising group connected to Anne Milton, and tellingly involving specific/unique claims of criminality put about by Dennis Paul.

Dominic Wightman Dominic Wightman (pictured right), who I have since discovered was then a member of the Conservative Party and an executive member of Shamley Green Conservatives, sought to smear me as a paedophile and then a stalker of women.

I later found out that privately he claimed he acted against me in this way because “Tim Ireland lives 3 villages from me and my local supporters (including the MP [Anne Milton]) want Ireland downed.”

When initially contacted about this, The Conservative Party would not even confirm or deny if Wightman was a member of their party.

Douglas Morpeth similarly refuses to confirm or deny if Wightman was an executive on the Shamley Green Conservatives fundraising committee. Douglas Morpeth further refuses to confirm or deny if he is/was the President/Chairman of the Shamley Green Conservatives fundraising committee, and while he helpfully implies the claims about two heart attacks in 2009 are untrue (see below), he is very vague about this and uses it as an excuse to refuse contact (i.e. as if it is me creating/broadcasting such inaccuracies, and not Mr Wightman).

Some of this reticence is likely something to do with Douglas Morpeth being a retired accountant and knowing exactly how bad it looks when a man serves as an executive on his fundraising committee while being an undischarged bankrupt.

Whether Dominic Wightman ever declared his 2009-2010 bankruptcy to Douglas Morpeth or anyone else on the committee is unknown at this stage, but Morpeth knows now that Wightman was bankrupt back then, and would probably really, really like to avoid talking about it in the future.

Dominic Wightman has since quietly resigned from Shamley Green Conservatives and even let his Conservative membership lapse; he has also stated quite bluntly that he has done the latter so he is better able to attack me and other ‘enemies of Conservatism’. He has since continued his smear campaign, sometimes under his own name, and sometimes through the use of false identities, and sometimes a mix of the two (such as the time he posed as a large black female nurse from Bedford and interviewed himself).

To give you a better idea of the truly insidious nature of Wightman’s accusations, after he was caught smearing me secretly/anonymously, he sent me dozens of emails, repeatedly pressing for a face-to-face meeting so he might explain himself in person, and when I refused and instead pressed him for details by email, he put a letter through my door late one night demanding that I cease contact with him.

That’s where he left his explanation for his previously smearing me as a dangerous paedophile; any attempt by me to ask him about it would result in him instead portraying me as a dangerous stalker. Clever, huh? As with Iain Dale, who sought to gain politically from this same smear, Wightman will sometimes deny his involvement from a safe distance, but he will not dare to discuss any specific evidence and/or answer for his conduct in any detail, and he (like others) has found the accusation of stalking to be very effective on this front.

In fact, his conduct has had a demonstrable influence on the Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, who has not only linked to this man’s website (despite being advised that it included directions to my house), but incorporated many of his smears into her own narrative.

Dorries has since gone on to personally invest so heavily in the ‘stalker’ lie herself that she even incorporated false claims originating from Dominic Wightman in a complaint to Bedfordshire Police. (Both parties have since gone on to make misleading statements about the outcome of that complaint to the extent of pretending that it resulted in a caution, which is entirely untrue.)

Back in 2009, when the evidence first started to emerge that Dominic Wightman was the primary source of multiple smears against me, Wightman simultaneously accused me of harassing him while anonymously attacking me online and repeatedly engineering the repeated publication of my home address (often alongside the false claim that I stalk women). I was kind of alarmed by all this at the time, and I must admit to missing a crucial scrap of evidence:

Douglas Morpeth was, previous to September 2009, listed as a patron of Dominic Wightman’s website, ‘Westminster Journal’, and this reference was quickly removed soon after Wightman knew he had been found out… but what really should have tipped me off was the claim by Wightman that I should not dare contact this man for fear of giving him a fatal heart attack:

“Regards the chap who I appointed Patron of Westminster Journal, Sir Douglas Morpeth, I have mentioned to his family that you are counting down to an attack – this is a particularly pertinent point because, expecting this and come-back from the LTTE for an article due out this next 10 days, I got his family to get him to sign a resignation letter back in April when his health (90’s) started failing. If you want a copy I’ll send it to you. He had a massive coronary in July and had another attack a couple of weeks ago…..I have no doubt there will be massive legal repercussions if he gets mentioned in light of him being on his deathbed.” – Dominic Wightman (Sep 9, 2009)

A witness confirms that Wightman requested the removal of Morpeth’s name from his site, and the reason given was “Morpeth was dying, and his family did not want the name there”… but this request was not sent in April of that year, it happened 3 days before the above email was sent!

It is clear from the timeline and the relevant correspondence that Dominic Wightman urgently sought to remove any reference to Douglas Morpeth as patron from his site before he used that site to launch an extended smear campaign designed to cover up the original smear campaign that he conducted when he thought himself safely anonymous.

It is unknown at this stage if this was a spontaneous attempt to protect Morpeth and/or a wider circle of Conservatives, or if it was something that happened as a result of Morpeth’s direct request because he knew exactly what Wightman was up to.

Years later I was reading through the old correspondence and it finally occurred to me to contact Douglas Morpeth by email and ask him a few questions.

Morpeth wasn’t dying, or dead, by the way… but it would be hard to tell from his initial response to my email. Morpeth initially took no action and offered no reply, but saw fit to forward our private correspondence to others, including Wightman. When pressed for a reply after a month of silence, he was exasperatingly evasive.

Not long after this (the weekend before the CPS inexplicably dropped their case against Wightman after his threats of violence against me), Wightman sought to intimidate me via an anonymous email that implied I would be up on a manslaughter charge should Douglas Morpeth suddenly drop dead as a result of my daring to ask him any further questions.

However, it is with complete confidence and an entirely clear conscience that I publicly accuse Douglas Morpeth of contributing to the corruption of the Shamley Green Conservatives fundraising committee and the subsequent cover-up.

I also challenge Douglas Morpeth to explain his position on entrusting an undischarged bankrupt with cash-handling and other fundraising tasks under his watch.

I further challenge the Conservative minister Anne Milton and the Conservative MP Jonathan Lord to finally take a public stance against the use of dangerous and damaging smears as a political weapon. They do themselves and the public no favours by continuing to allow and exploit multiple instances of false claims of criminality up to and including child rape.

PS – Douglas Morpeth lives directly opposite Dominic Wightman’s family home. I’d show you the relevant evidence, but I’m not inclined to publish any details that might be falsely portrayed as my behaving in the same manner as Mr Wightman, who previously broadcast my ex-directory home address and even published specific directions to my house in an effort to intimidate me.

UPDATE – Barthsnotes – May 2011: A Threat From Dominic Wightman

UPDATE (11 April) – On 8 April I tracked Douglas Morpeth’s receipt of my email making him aware of this article. He made no effort to communicate any response to me, but less than 24 hours later, I was smeared as a paedophile again (i.e. in the first attack of its kind since the 2009 event). This time the author decided to incorporate my volunteering with local children into this damaging and dangerous lie. Conservative MPs Anne Milton and Jonathan Lord still refuse to attempt to draw this matter to a close by taking a public stand against this kind of conduct. Jeremy Hunt, my local MP, and also a Conservative, refuses to even discuss the possibility of conducting any diplomacy or casework that might draw this matter to a close. I used to wonder why people used the word ‘scum’ next to ‘Tory’ so readily. Those days are long behind me.

UPDATE (16 April) – Douglas Morpeth’s only response to all of the above? A vague denial about being in touch with Dominic Wightman recently. Everything else stands unchallenged. Meanwhile, Dominic Wightman has published a series of false claims and implications (while pretending to be someone other than himself, naturally), including the entirely false suggestion that the email I quote above has been fabricated or falsified in some way. In response, I publish the entire email below, including the part where he bragged (not for the first or last time) that he was able to libel me/others without consequence, due to his being an undischarged bankrupt at the time. Further, given that I have never targeted anyone’s family in the way he implies and he later saw fit to broadcast and publish details of my home address alongside entirely false allegations of stalking and extremism, the threat to my family (and that of Richard Bartholomew’s) is quite stark.

From: Dominic Wightman [dominicwightman@hotmail.com]
To: Tim Ireland
Date: Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 8:14 AM
Subject: Your lack of writing

Did that two days ago.
While you’re there, we’ll keep family out of this – I have no interest in making yours or Richard’s, or others, feel uncomfortable where they live and I’m sure you don’t mine. This point is particularly pertinent related to 2 untimely deaths regarding Vigil funding (July05 and Nov06) – mentioning either of these blood relatives, either obliquely, will be tantamount to mentioning family and I will respond in kind. “Blood relatives” will do for comment. Mentioning Tom Mills’ ugly sister etc …. totally pointless but others won’t hesitate if you or the lefties mention my family.
Regards the chap who I appointed Patron of Westminster Journal, Sir Douglas Morpeth, I have mentioned to his family that you are counting down to an attack – this is a particularly pertinent point because, expecting this and come-back from the LTTE for an article due out this next 10 days, I got his family to get him to sign a resignation letter back in April when his health (90’s) started failing. If you want a copy I’ll send it to you. He had a massive coronary in July and had another attack a couple of weeks ago…..I have no doubt there will be massive legal repercussions if he gets mentioned in light of him being on his deathbed.
Finally, for all of you, and Murray, I’ll only play the Schillings card and release the Uzbek files if, like Spinbotch and suggestion of financial malpractice, testimony of flawed witnesses is mentioned to insinuate points against me, if unproven emails are aired or if anyone is blatantly libellous. That’s the great thing about Surrey – from one village to the next when you’ve lived here long enough there is always someone willing to help stick the knife in. Remember I’m placed to lose nothing financially.
First statements coming out on Friday.
Have a super day.
Best,
Dom

“Testimony of flawed witnesses” and “unproven emails” refers to Glen Jenvey telling police that he had an accomplice in his attempt to smear me as a convicted paedophile (that he refused to name at the time, but later revealed to be Dominic Wightman), and the evidence that Wightman sent Glen Jenvey my ex-directory home address via email while simultaneously posing as an ally and feeding me damaging material about that same person (some of it genuine, some of it distorted if not falsified). Wightman later based his denial of involvement in the 2009 paedo-smear on a claim he knew to be a lie (that lie being that police had always thought Jenvey acted alone; Wightman not only knew otherwise, he tried to convince me that another of his perceived enemies was responsible).

If Dominic Wightman is genuinely concerned about any contact/mention re: his family, it is most likely rooted in his fear that his mother might find out what he’s been up to. For the record, I have so far resisted the temptation to simply pop round and tell on him.

UPDATE (14 Aug 2012) – In recent correspondence, another serving executive was given no choice but to confirm that Douglas Morpeth was and is President of the Shamley Green Conservatives fundraising committee. It has taken OVER A YEAR to have this simple fact confirmed by any executive on that committee, including the President himself. Shortly after, Douglas Morpeth finally confirmed that Dominic Wightman stood as an executive on his fundraising committee. He declined to confirm the specific dates of 2005-2010, most likely because of the combined embarrassments of this issue and the bankruptcy issue.








Posted in Anne Milton, Tories! Tories! Tories! | 1 Comment

Ed Miliband, Nadine Dorries, and office burglary etiquette

There’s been rather a lot of fuss in recent days about an apparent break-in at Ed Miliband’s Commons offices. Police are investigating and speculation is rife.

Personally, I think everybody should calm down and take a leaf out of the Holy Book of Dorries.

Nadine Dorries claims that almost exactly the same thing happened at her constituency residence in 2010; she says she returned to her constituency home to discover that the front door had been removed from its hinges. She further claimed that nothing was actually missing from the house and the only thing the intruder(s) appeared to be interested in were her office filing cabinets, which had all been opened and rifled through.

This was in early 2010, just prior to a general election, and it took place at a time when Nadine Dorries’ paperwork was of particular interest to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards… but did Dorries make a fuss and call the police? No, she did not. She did take the time to report several critics and a political opponent of ‘stalking’ her, but obviously that was/is a far greater and more legitimate concern than any piddling paperwork that might have been viewed or stolen by unknown burglars (even if Dorries’ incursion does sound far more professional than Miliband’s ‘forced door’ incident.).

I’m equally confident that if Dorries ever mentioned it to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, it was only in passing; perhaps as a possible explanation for her inability to produce paperwork supporting her expenses claims.

Because, as we all know, Nadine Dorries is not one to make a fuss unnecessarily.








Posted in Tories! Tories! Tories! | 4 Comments

FAO: John Bercow, Re: Nadine Dorries is not a reasonable person (and you damn well know it)

The following is for the attention of John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, in reply to his initial response to the allegation that I will repeat in summary form here:

It was my understanding after direct conversations and correspondence with John Bercow’s wife, Sally Bercow, that a ‘peace deal’ had been brokered between that couple and Nadine Dorries to the effect that she would not act in an aggressive manner towards them if they did not act in an aggressive manner towards her. (If you are not familiar with Nadine Dorries, the laughingly absurd inequities of such an agreement may not be immediately clear to you. Read on.)

John Bercow has now denied that any kind of ‘peace deal’ had been brokered, and described my allegations as “defamatory remarks made against a named Member of Parliament” in an email that – now I look closely at it – does not make it entirely clear if this refers to himself, or Nadine Dorries, or both. Whatever the case may be, it was clearly important that he speak with his wife, and I said so in my reply. I then sent a Direct Message to Sally Bercow via Twitter to suggest that she speak with her husband.

That was on Friday. I’ve allowed them the grace of an entire weekend to formulate a response, and have heard nothing.

So this morning I invite Sally Bercow to explain the following exchange of private messages on Twitter (in response to an RT in my public stream). I further challenge John Bercow to answer any of the points raised in the open letter that forms the bulk of this post.

bloggerheads Tim Ireland
RT @Gaijinsan21: This new Bercow/Dorries love-in is doing nothing to abate my contempt for @Nadine_MP alas, it’s just damaging my faith in @SallyBercow.
01/18/2011 Reply Retweet Favorite


DIRECT MESSAGES

18/01/2011 21:45 SallyBercow
bloggerheads @bloggerheads Hi Tim – I’m sure you think I’m a sell-out but I just had to win Nadine over – she was on air abt J & I every week! Xxx

18/01/2011 21:48 bloggerheads
SallyBercow I figured that was your motive, but did not want to say so and thereby undermine it… even if I do think you are wasting your time

18/01/2011 21:49 bloggerheads
SallyBercow I predict she’ll be at your throat(s) the first time either of you take a reasonable position against something she really, really wants.

18/01/2011 21:50 SallyBercow
bloggerheads Well she hasn’t sounded off about us for at least 6 weeks! I hear what you say though x

18/01/2011 21:52 bloggerheads
SallyBercow You’re sweeping the ocean back with a broom. She’ll rush in like the tide when she wants something, just you wait and see.

18/01/2011 21:53 SallyBercow
bloggerheads Yes maybe…

[Unaltered extract of a private exchange between myself and Sally Bercow, conducted using Direct Messages on the Twitter platform, in response to my public RT (top) that prompts the conversation. All messages are verifiable, should the matter go to court. Sally Bercow has an equal level of access to these DMs through her own account, and I will be delighted to explain to her how to access them independently so she may verify the accuracy of the text and the wider context of our conversation. I would also be delighted to discuss any further Direct Messages she may wish to disclose if she feels that they undermine my point or contradict my position in any way.]

My prediction that Dorries would lash out if challenged has yet to be tested, because – to my great surprise and disappointment – John Bercow has yet to challenge Nadine Dorries on anything of substance. In fact, 6 weeks after this exchange took place, John Bercow nominated Nadine Dorries for a position on the Panel of Chairs:

The Speaker has nominated Nadine Dorries to be a member of the Panel of Chairs during the present Parliament (Standing Order No. 4(1)). (source: Votes and Proceedings: 31 March 2011)

The Panel of Chairs comprises the Chairman and two Deputy Chairmen of Ways and Means, and not fewer than ten Members nominated at the beginning of each session by the Speaker. Members of the Panel are appointed by the Speaker to chair Public Bill Committees and other general committees. They may also chair debates in Westminster Hall and act as temporary chairs of Committees of the whole House. (source)

This position by the Speaker is only part-defensible if Nadine Dorries’ behaviour had improved markedly in the 12 week period between her last public attacks on the Bercows and her appointment to the Panel of Chairs. If some form of improvement were apparent to the Speaker, I would dare to suggest that he was operating from a limited if not entirely self-centred perspective.

This brings us rushing headlong to the point where I accuse John Bercow of allowing corruption to once again infect Parliament.

John Bercow may claim his wife did not understand the situation, or that he was unaware of the situation with his wife and Nadine Dorries. Sally Bercow may claim that I have failed to understand the situation; she may even admit some small amount of fault to the extent that she has described the situation carelessly or inaccurately. But if you read on, you will see that his recommendation of Nadine Dorries to a position of responsibility puts John Bercow in a very precarious position, whatever the situation:

Dear Mr Speaker,

I am about to explain to you the grounds on which I accuse you of allowing corruption to infect Parliament.

I wish to begin with your use of the word ‘antediluvian’ in pre-Speaker days that drove Nadine Dorries first to a dictionary, and then into a rage. Even if this incident does not accurately indicate your awareness of the fundamentalist claptrap that Nadine Dorries peddles in the House, it reliably informs us that you know from experience how Nadine Dorries can explode at mere criticism.

Further, having subsequently been on the receiving end of her attacks, you are in a unique if unenviable position; you know that Nadine Dorries is capable of attacking someone’s reputation in a way that is clearly unwarranted, using material that is grossly distorted where not wholly invented.

This knowledge alone should have prevented you from trusting Nadine Dorries with any role crucial to the integrity of Parliament; you have witnessed her acting without integrity.

But my challenge to you today goes beyond this; I seek to establish that Nadine Dorries falls so far short of the demands of Parliament and society generally that she does not even rate the description ‘reasonable person’.

A child acting in this way would be excluded from school, not made prefect.

I will open my evidence by formally bringing to your attention to the contradiction between what Nadine Dorries told the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, and what she told the public after the relevant Standards and Privileges Committee report was published…

Nadine Dorries was claiming expenses on a constituency property on the basis that it was her second home. However, many entries on her website indicated that it was in fact her first home. A core ruling of the Standards and Privileges Committee report was that they accepted Nadine Dorries’ story about entries on her website giving the wrong idea about how much time she spent in the constituency for entirely political reasons:

“I often posted comments on my blog relating to [name of town] in my constituency. Since I first rented in the constituency, I made a song and dance about being at the property. I have mentioned it on my blog a number of times. This was done to comfort my Association. The previous MP only visited the constituency occasionally—sometimes only as often as once every six weeks—and they were keen that I reversed that impression. His lack of time in the constituency contributed to his de-selection. – Letter to the Commissioner from Ms Nadine Dorries MP, 25 January 2010

The MP you nominated for the Panel of Chairs confessed to misleading her constituents and association about the amount of time she spent in the constituency.

When the public confronted her about her “70% fiction” moment, Dorries claimed that she had been the subject of physical stalking to such an extent that police had advised her to fictionalise her movements on her blog for her own protection.

If Nadine Dorries had done the same thing with a court judgement, she would be found in contempt; it was a complete misrepresentation of the investigation, and of a major basis for the ruling.

The MP you nominated for the Panel of Chairs knowingly misrepresented the position of two police forces in her efforts to distort the public’s understanding of a ruling by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards.

DCI Christopher Lee, stationed in the Houses of Parliament, can tell you if Nadine Dorries has faced any genuine threat of physical or even electronic stalking, and if it is true that, in light of the risk she describes, Nadine Dorries was issued with instructions to falsify details of her whereabouts as described. He won’t tell me, which I find odd, because according to Dorries, I’m supposed to be that stalker

Bedfordshire Police will be sure to contradict me if I am wrong in my understanding of their position that Nadine Dorries says ‘stalker’ when she means ‘critic with a web presence’, though we are at present in dispute over my understanding of assurances they gave me about what would happen if it emerged that Nadine Dorries had been lying to them.

On the subject of lies that Nadine Dorries told police, here come some demonstrables that also concern you and the credibility of Parliament:

“I shall finish by mentioning a book which is to be launched this month. It is published by the charity Forsaken, which is neither pro-life nor pro-choice: it is pro-women. For two years, the charity has put together the stories of women suffering from post-abortion syndrome… One woman in the book describes how even when she told the anaesthetist that she was changing her mind and was having doubts, he pushed her to go ahead. He did so because, if she changed her mind, he would not have been paid. There is the same process as for the counselling. If the woman does not go ahead with the abortion, the clinics are not paid for the counselling, and therefore they need to know that she is going ahead before she is given the counselling-and we can imagine the process that ensues.” – Nadine Dorries, House of Commons, 2 Nov 2010 (source)

The group that Nadine Dorries spoke of here was ‘Forsaken in Taunton’; they were not the mature and unbiased charity that Dorries described. They were clearly very new. They were so new, they had not yet registered as a charity, but had made the mistake of printing the words ‘Registered Charity’ on their literature ahead of any paperwork going through. They also had a deeply religious agenda, which calls into question Dorries’ assurances to the House about the source of the anecdotal evidence she sought to air in Parliament, and later in public.

(The allegation that the abortion counselling process had been corrupted by a profit motive has been repeated many times since by Nadine Dorries, but she has yet to produce any evidence of the corruption she describes above in what she refers to as ‘the abortion industry’.)

I published evidence supporting my contention that Parliament had been misled in this instance. Nadine Dorries reacted by making entirely false allegations about my behaving inappropriately toward ‘Forsaken’, who to their credit saw fit to immediately contradict her claims about emails (few in number, and entirely appropriate) and phone calls (never happened at all, entirely invented detail from the ever-inventive Dorries).

When subsequently under pressure from the public to produce evidence of a police investigation that never existed, Nadine Dorries prompted an investigation into my attending a public meeting to which I was invited by giving Bedfordshire Police a grossly distorted account of events.

(Psst! Even if it could be successfully argued that I had committed a crime or maybe risked coming near to committing a crime by attending that event, this would not go anywhere near establishing a pattern of harassment as required for Dorries’ story to hold, and even if it did it would still require a time machine to work. I’m supposed to be her worst stalker out of a group of people who are supposedly physically stalking her, and I’ve been in her presence once, for entirely legitimate reasons, after the period where she claims to have been physically stalked.)

As part of a ‘report’ to Mid Bedfordshire Police, Nadine Dorries repeated to their detectives the claim about the calls to Forsaken, after she had been contradicted by the alleged recipients. She also told Bedfordshire Police that I was a “notorious computer hacker”, making the crucial error of telling a demonstrable lie in the name of the law firm Carter-Ruck.

The MP you nominated for the Panel of Chairs makes false accusations of criminality to police on behalf of well known law firms.

I invite you to ask Carter-Ruck if they told Nadine Dorries or anyone else if I were a “notorious computer hacker”. They won’t say anything to me. Maybe it’s because I’m so scary with my computer hacking and what have you.

Bedfordshire Police, while doing very little to discourage Dorries’ repeated attempts to politicise their investigation, were kind enough to point out that they held the position both before and after the investigation that I had committed no crime. Nadine Dorries’ own lawyers are quoted in the resulting report (that you’re welcome to inspect) as having exactly the same position.

And yet the MP you nominated for the Panel of Chairs seeks to misrepresent Bedfordshire Police to the extent of falsely declaring that their investigation ended with my being issued with a caution, which is an outright lie, and not the result of any mere confusion (as she has repeatedly been allowed to pretend):

“One particularly obsessive man recently followed me round with a camera, whipped up online hysteria against me and eventually had to accept a police caution for harassment.”
Nadine Dorries, September 2011
(source: Self-penned article in Daily Mail)

Note in this more recent example, Dorries is using the same phantom stalkers to discourage and poison any scrutiny of a demonstrably false prospectus. And after a week of being contradicted by evidence from the people she sought to discredit in this way, she brought her original package to the House as if none of that had happened.

The MP you nominated for the Panel of Chairs brings discredited evidence to Parliament as if it has not been challenged.

Dorries was then soundly defeated in the vote that followed, but subsequently rewarded (what?) by having her soundly rejected concerns about counselling taken seriously to the extent that an all-too-opaque panel process is now discussing potential changes to the abortion counselling process on the basis of an entirely false prospectus.

One member found the whole process so inequitable that she resigned from the panel. Dorries responded by claiming that this person was sleeping through meetings. Much of this rested on Dorries’ word, which carries a certain authority in matters of Parliamentary process, and that’s entirely thanks to your patronage, Mr Speaker.

After all, why would Nadine Dorries lie about what happens in meetings when the Speaker puts her in charge of meetings?

Well, I will tell you my best guess: She would mostly likely lie about what goes on in meetings even though the Speaker puts her in charge of meetings, because the Speaker has allowed himself to be compromised by a vindictive liar (even if it is as he claims and the compromise was not one of his intention/design).

A Parliamentary Standards Authority report doesn’t go the way she wants it to, so Nadine Dorries tells a lie to excuse/cover a damaging admission that was crucial to the ruling.

That lie requires her to prove that a police investigation took place when she cannot even provide evidence of having made a complaint, so Nadine Dorries lies to police to get an investigation going.

The investigation does not turn out the way she wants it to, so Nadine Dorries lies about the outcome.

She then uses the same lies to discredit and intimidate critics while discouraging any scrutiny into her expenses and/or an ongoing attempt by anti-abortion fundamentalists to influence Parliament without making their interests and intentions known. It is here I remind you that when you campaigned for the position of speaker, you claimed that you would act in a way that would prevent “fertile ground on which extremists feed”.

The boundaries that control you and me and other reasonable people have no meaning to this person; she crosses them with rampant aggression, all while claiming victim status on the basis of her being a woman (a ‘maverick’ with a merely ‘controversial’ outlook doing it her way in a MAN’s world, baby!).

Nadine Dorries also shows a clear pattern of telling lies of behalf of people/groups that she thinks will lend them credibility, which is not only dishonest, but incredibly reckless.

You should know all of this from experience if not mere competence, and this is why I find it so easy to believe that you turn a blind eye to her inappropriate conduct, just like so many others who dare not cross her for fear that she will go off in their face.

Meanwhile, Dorries’ appalling behaviour continues, and it is clearly getting worse as she is allowed to carry on unchecked.

Last week, I was announced as a front row guest in the BBC’s The Big Questions; at some stage between 9:15pm Saturday night and 5:30am on Sunday morning, Nadine Dorries was in contact with producers of that show, by Twitter, email and phone, telling them that police had issued me with a caution for stalking her, and warning them of dire consequences should I be allowed on live television. A further party they won’t name (!) also contacted staff to repeat the lie about computer hacking, once again attributed to Carter-Ruck.

As a result of these outright lies, I was excluded from the front row debate, and deliberately placed in the audience with no microphone. The debate I was invited to but then not allowed to take part in was on journalistic ethics, by the way. The only way Dorries was connected to the event was through the deepest of ironies.

Nadine Dorries had no business calling producers in the way she did, it appears she has since managed to bully them into obscuring actionable evidence, and I cannot help but compare this to what she claimed I did to ‘Forsaken’. Just who is stalking who here? Just which one of us really needs to be cautious about announcing their movements ahead of time?

Dorries engaged in this extraordinary intervention the day before her meeting with BBC director general Mark Thompson. I find myself wondering if this came up during the relevant exchanges but I am worried that we may never know for sure. I specifically instructed production staff on the day to preserve the relevant data because I wished to access it under the Data Protection Act; they later claimed the relevant correspondence had somehow “expired” in the day(s) that followed my request.

Oh, and on this note I almost forgot:

Nadine Dorries claimed I sent her “vile, abusive messages”, but then refused to produce the emails/messages she claims I sent her, even when compelled to by law under the Data Protection Act.

The MP you nominated for the Panel of Chairs clearly does not think the rules apply to her, and openly defies the law when it suits her.

I could go on. For a week.

I have an army of witnesses. Rock solid evidence.

You have a shouty lady who tells lies.

Surely you are aware of Dorries’ now-infamous claim that a “gust of wind” caused her to accidentally cast a rule book out of a window. Rule book. Literally. Out the window. And she blogged that she’d done it. She’s utterly shameless.

Mr Speaker, there is so much more to this that I can show you, but do I really have to go further than this to have you acknowledge the folly of your ways?

Ultimately, do you really dare face the public and tell them that you nominated Nadine Dorries for the Panel of Chairs in good faith and still consider her fit for the role because you genuinely think her to be both capable of balance and worthy of trust?

As disappointing as this would be from someone in your position, part of me is actually looking forward to watching you try.

Typically I’d close by explaining what specific action I’d appreciate in response to my letter , but to be perfectly frank with you, it should be bloody obvious without my having to point it out to you, and if you seek to further shield Dorries from accountability – as you give every indication of doing – then the next move is probably best made by your replacement anyway.

Tim Ireland
www.bloggerheads.com

There it is.

Updates to follow, as and when. Cheers all.

UPDATE (7th March) – As Richard Bartholomew notes in his post, Sally Bercow’s only response to all of this is an ill-defined claim that it is “utterly absurd”. The Speaker, meanwhile, has gone from angry charges of “defamation” to stone cold silence. If the correspondence from Sally Bercow were not accurate, she would be able to produce evidence to this effect, but she cannot do this and she does not see fit to articulate any defence of her position; instead she just attempts to discredit mine with vague pejorative terms. Having tracked all relevant messages, I can say with confidence that John Bercow can no longer claim to be unaware of Dorries’ corruption, and there is as of now no doubt about his wilfully turning a blind eye to it. A man of integrity would have followed this up, checked a few things with police and Dorries lawyers’, and sought to determine the accuracy of the allegations laid out in this post. John Bercow shows no sign of having done this, and if he has done this and chosen to remain silent anyway, that only makes it worse.








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