Holy tamoly! I see Jonathan Aitken, bog-eyed perjurer and disgraced former Tory MP for Thanet South, is to make a political comeback. Apparently he's going to be applying his sword of truth to the penal system on behalf of the blue rinsers. Why not go the whole hog and ship Jeffrey Archer and Cecil Parkinson back in?
Which reminds me of a story one of my old news chums told me once. He was covering a visit by the Mad Bat to the Welsh Valleys in the 80s, just after Cecil's philanderings had hit the papers. The usual SWP demonstrators were there, shouting their habitual 'Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, Out! Out! Out!' which they alternated with 'Kinnock, Kinnock, Kinnock, In! In! In!' Then one bright spark hit upon a variation.
It wasn't long before the entire crowd, onlookers and journos included, were chanting: 'Cecil! Cecil! Cecil! In Out! In Out! In Out!'
10 comments:
Jonathan Aitken’s return to Tory politics still makes me uneasy.
“to this day, we still don't know why the minister we trusted to oversee our defence procurement was in Paris that long-ago weekend to meet the Saudis.
We know that he lied and got his daughter to lie in court for him,and that he was found out, but we don't know why he lied.
We're still finding out plenty about the contracts with BAE in the Eighties that Aitken helped put together - because the huge backhanders paid to the Saudis are public knowledge now - but we don't know what happened after he became a minister of the crown.”
Until this question is answered, there will always be a cloud over Aitken.
Cllr Green
I sent a congratulatory email to Cornerhouse for their win in court about the BAe matter.
I was pleased that on TV the cornerhouse spokesman made the point that no one should be above the law.
This is a principle I have sought to get upheld by the Courts.
It is a principle that your own Stephen Ladyman and Huw Edwards failed to subscribe to.
It is a principle that you failed to subscribe to (The Standards Cttee meeting which sat whilst Cllr Neville Hudson with held the evidence file ?)
ECR
The history is long and complex.
In 1972 I resigned the police after dissenting in a sudden death inquiry. But I did not unswaer the constable oath hence I remain a constable in the case (law researched for me by a District Judge)
In 1989 I disocovered new evidence and sought to quash the 1972 suicide verdict. My then MP Sir John Stradling Thomas wrote to the Home Secretary and the Attorney General. Their replies suggested that they could not have read the full text of Sir John's letters.
Sir John planned to raise parliamentary ombudsman inquiry. But his death intervened and Labour's Huw Edwards won the by election.
Edwards refused to take the case forward. So new prospective tory Roger Evans (a barrister) gave me free legal advice and gave a statement to the press (published by South Wales Argus).
Roger won the seat back at election and then made an application to the attorney general for fiat to access the high court to seek to quash the 1972 suicide verdict.
Secret Public interest custodianship of the attorney general blocked the application.
An issue in the case is "Public interest" (the sort of thing waved to protect the BAe matters from a judicial examination heretofore)
My position is that the office of constable is independent under the Crown and is bound only by the oath of the queen as fount of all justice. My oath, bound by the supreme oath in admin of justice, is to discharge duty faithfully unto law.
Hence my position is that the govt law officer has no power to re-define public interest which is already defined unrepealably in our constitutional monarchy.
IE Even if I were wrong the only person empowered to judge is a Judge and then only in open court.
At issue in the case is an allged unlawful police no go area orchestrated by MI5 via Special Branch. The alleged beneficiaries of this police no go area were MI6 ... Harry Sporborg, Airey Neave, Sue Ryder, Eric Berthoud, Leonard Cheshire.
The principle being be you ever so high the law must be above you.
At the time of the case in 1972 there was an aspect involving the alleged use of IRA assets to acquire information of use to the Soviet.
Sparing you the ramifications this eventually led me to be concerned with alleged sabotage of backup generators, unlawful armed deployments to Ireland, the bombing of Deal Barracks.
To advance my case (my sworn duty) it was/is necessary to address matters of failure to enforce law in Thanet. Firearms law, range law and treason law.
What Cllr Green and the Standards Ctee were asked to investigate was failure of TDC to enforce planning law and noise nuisance law against a rifle range, whether a TDC head of dept used that range and whether TDC had failed to report to police matters like the sound of unlawful machine gun fire.
One of my witnesses, in my presence, attempted to make a crime complaint against Cllr William Hayton alleging that hayton had called him seeking to dissuade his evidence.
Initially DCI Gladstone accepted crime complaints from both witness and myself (who had also been on the end of a Hayton phone call)
However no crime complaints were recorded.
TDC were also asked whether Cllr Hayton had told Aldwych High Court in 1998 that there was no procedure of inquiry in place concerning former tory Cllr George Richard Maison.
TDC were asked to consider that if Hayton was on honour withdrawal at the time of the incident about which he gave evidence then he was not a witness of fact but expert by virtue of elected office and carried ongoing duty.
The fact is that Kent Police Authority, of which Hayton was/is a member, had called for inquiry in August 1997 and that call was still open at the time of the High Court case in 1998.
On the face of it then Cllr Haytons alleged evidence would have been perjury.
Was it the case that Cllr Mortlock took Cllr Maison before the then TDC Chief Executive and that Maison admitted using TDC officers to intercept mail addressed to other cllrs ?
If this was the case why was there no report to Post Office and police and no inquiry at TDC.
It seems reasonable to infer that the High Court (in the Mortlock libel case brought successfully against Maison who was also exposed as a liar at a 1979 Inquest on examination by then HM Coroner Jack Rice reported in press copy available) would,itself infer from a statement of nil inquiry that nil inquiry equated to nil matters of concern ? This would be misleading to the Court and another perjury ?
Cllr Green ... you helped protect a matter of perjury from proper examination.
You are hardly qualified to criticise Jonathan Aitken.
I think the main point here is one of where has my money gone, having paid for locking up Messers Archer and Aitken both of whom could have paid a hefty fine, once they were no longer MPs they were not a danger to society. So why where they locked up, surely not as retribution, wouldn’t that make nonsense of the penal system? Perhaps I am wrong here, but having paid a large amount of money to produce two ex-politicians with hands on experience of the prison system shouldn’t both political parties be using it.
I am sure Jonathan Aitken would be as happy to cooperate with Labour in helping to resolve the problems of our prisons, he did after all fund a socialist newspaper when he was our MP what do you think chaps?
Well he's of Beaverbrook descent and his interest in 'swords of truth' is undeniable. And now he espouses the Good Book (and has even published one of his own - Prayers For People Under Pressure) I suppose you could say his rehabilitation is complete. Or should we be thinking leopards and spots???
Michael
The Matron McGill Decd case (to which I referred above)has been described by a barrister as the most important police constitutional case since 1829.
The administration of justice is done under the authority of the Crown.
Constables are part of that system. They are independent ministerial officers of the Crown. Since Magna Carta the monarch is bound to appoint as constables only those who know the law and who will keep it well (Back then keep was to preserve well throughout life .. hence the constable oath is a lifelong commitment unless unsworn)
There are three things which cloud the picture:
(1) Govt law officer absolute secret custodianship of public interest
(2) The Chief constable discretion to direct his force .. limited at police no go areas and treason. This discretion has been slightly curtailed by the new police complaints law (pressured for by the late John Allen and myself)
(3) The "Force liaison reporting" arrangements of Special Branch with MI5
The fact remains that the supreme authority of a constable is his Crown duty and oath. He bends his knee to no man but Judge in open court.
Do you want to continue to live in a country where the police answer to govt in breach of their oaths to the Queen. A country in which govt effectively decides which cases the "Independent judiciary" can hear ?
Once a constable is charged with a duty the duty can only be discharged to Judiciary. Otherwise we have a police state.
That is the principle I seek to uphold. That no matter how high the law must be above you.
Concerning the speck in aitkens eye mote in Cllr Greens eye matter.
As part of submitting a case to the European Court of Human rights I wanted to show that I had exhausted all domestic remedy.
Of all the public bodies I wrote to (Suffolk Police etc) I only got one reply disputing my version of events. From TDC.
The TDC solicitor Mr Borley wrote to inform me that I was wrong to state to ECHR that Thanet Council standards cttee had been given a file with photos in the appendices of unlawful firing and unlawful earthworks at a Thanet gun range.
Mr Borley later accepted that he would have to have a word with the acting chair of standards Cllr Neville Hudson who had been sent the file.
hence I await David Greens response. Any legal advice Borley gave Green and co was clearly given without taking the repoort into account.
As I understand it the advice to cllrs was event based. IE That if Hayton gave High Court evidence when not a TDC cllr (1998) then it was a matter beyond the Standards jurisdiction.
However I argue that if Hayton was an expert witness then the matter is within TDC jurisdiction.
To determine if that was the case I had asked Borley for inquiry into the matter of Cllr Mortlock taking Cllr Maison before the Chief Executive about the alleged mail intercept and intimidation of lady labour councillors. Surely if no inquiry ensued that would be a matter of ongoing concern to standards. And hence iof a cllr jhad a history of telling the high court there was no process of inquiry.
If Hayton was an expert witness ? I had asked Borley for inquiry into an alleged assaul;t incident in TDC chambers by Maison on Margaret Mortlock. Was Hayton on honour withdrawal at this time ?
If he was on withdrawal (requiring he be beyond sight and earshot) then he cannot be a witness of fact.
The only other category is expert requiring that he check his facts.
As far as I recall, knowing that the case file had been withheld, nonetheless Neville Hudson seconded Richard Nicholsons motion to full council that the Standards Cttee decision, to nil action complaint against Hayton, be endorsed.
Another thread mentioned the Thanet mafia.
In short
Hayton allegedly told the High Court there was no inquiry and failed to inform the court that kpa had called for inquiry.
The TDC aspects were then subjected to my call to Mr Borley for inquiry.
Borley refused to make inquiry.
Then he advised the Standards Cttee without having provable sight of the complaint casefile.
When brought to issue Borley said he would have to speak with Neville Hudson but seems in the subsequent years never to have run into him.
This is your council Michael.
ECR
Concerning the call by Kent Police Authority in August 1997 for inquiry into
(1) The arrests of Broadstairs based TA soldiers in 1987 for paramilitary activity contrary to the Unlawful Drilling Act 1819
(2) The allegation of sabotage at petbow consistent with Stage Three of the OIRA Garland Plan
(3) The failure of Kent Police to act on warnings given before the 1989 bombing of Deal barracks
(4) The allegation that senior officers stole evidence at the bombing scene and exempted those, already subject of ignored warnings, from the scope of the bombing inquiry.
Evidence has emerged that all these matters are connected and this was included in a report to the Home Secretary after Tony Blair copied concerns to the Northern Ireland office and gave the Home Sec responsibility for a decision under the Civil Contingencies and police Acts to decide whether to compel this inquiry NOW.
On 13th oct 2007 Mr Gilmartin, Clerk to Kent Police Authority, informed me that he is still examining these matters as part of his ongoing duties.
But no ministerial order to compel the inquiry has yet been issued. John Reid resigned without givinbg a decision.
Amongst the TA paramilitaries arrested in 1987 but not charged was George Richard Maison.
IF there was a public interest decision not to prosecute I wonder.
or was it the case that the men accepted cautions.
Either way was this declared as the pre requisite for Maison to stand for council ? he became a tory cllr.
I note with interest Pat Monteaths book "Operation Orpheus" in which he describes that there was a traitor in the Broadstairs TA. In the story a member of the Irish Republican Socialist Party (political wing of INLA).
In the book this character is called George INAMOS.
Well who can that be .....
Also serving in the TA unit in which the arrests occurred was later Margate Mayor Tony Regan.
I don't think that public interest is a flag.
I think it is a stone needing lifting.
Don't hold yer breath waiting for KPA's Mr Gilmartin to complete examination of the history and commit his legally trained self to a position.
So, cock-up or conspiracy? You decide!
Dickie,old boy, you seem to have acquired the interesting character 'R Card' whom Biggles has been 'plagued by for months'! A man with some serious angst to un-load and interesting to read; just be careful,old chap,about any libellous issues, because I would hate to see youin hot water as the blog owner!
Richard Card, interesting character?
Gracious me, you need to get out once!
I don't think I've been so completely bored since that 'Horse' fella tried to, er, kick my back door in.
He'd be useful in the back of the boat during a yacht race.
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