The doomsday climate jamboree

Once again political leaders from the around the world are gathering for the annual doomsday climate jamboree, this time in Egypt. This blog has previously dismissed (see https://bit.ly/3HLWoeY) these gatherings as pointless virtue signalling which achieve nothing. The main objective is to reduce CO2 emissions but, once again, these hit an all time record in 2021, and this trend is likely to continue for some years yet.

A secondary objective is now becoming apparent, with demands being placed on Western countries to provide ‘reparations’ for the damage supposedly caused by historic past emissions. This is a smart move since it plays on liberal guilt for the sin of living in richer and more economically successful countries, achieved through their own innovation, invention, and industry. Western countries such as Britain have been flagellating themselves incessantly by parroting the belief that extreme weather events are caused by ‘climate change’ rather than the natural phenomenon known as weather. Extreme weather events have occurred regularly for countless centuries but it is only in the last few decades that they have been blamed on the climate change scam. So it is no surprise that poorer countries have opportunistically taken the logical step of starting to demand financial compensation for developed countries past sins.

Since the start of the miners strike in 1984 the number of collieries has declined from 152 to zero, the last closing in 2015. During the same period about fifty coal fired power stations have been closed, and just two remain operational today. Ironically, the left wing activists who opposed pit closures during the miners strike under the slogan ‘coal not dole’ are today the most fanatical opponents of fossil fuels.

It is worth examining what the political parties had to say about energy in the years immediately after the miners strike. The Labour Party manifesto declared that ‘we have huge reserves of coal which will last for centuries’ adding that ‘efficiency in industry and security in the community both depend on reliable and safe supplies of energy available at acceptable cost. Britain's oil reserves have a limited life’. Labour opposed new nuclear power stations and promised increased support for renewable energy projects.

The Liberal Democrats promised ‘continued modernisation and development of the coal industry, including new coal-fired power stations’ adding that ‘existing capacity and planned coal-fired power stations are enough to meet our needs for some time to come and we see no case for proceeding with new nuclear power stations at the present time’. The Liberal Democrats also promised greater support for renewable energy projects.

The Green Party recognised that ‘coal, oil and gas will continue to play a vital part in our energy strategy, but their use must respect the necessity for conservation.’ However, ‘nuclear power must be phased out’ promising to ‘close down all nuclear reactors within four years’. There was a strong emphasis on developing ‘widespread energy conservation programmes and renewable energy supplies’.

The Conservative Party stated that ‘coal will continue to meet much of the steadily rising demand for electricity. Renewable sources of energy can make some contribution to the nation's energy needs’ adding that they would ‘proceed with the next phase of our nuclear programme’. They stressed the importance of North Sea oil ‘so successfully developed by free enterprise, but it is an advantage that will not last indefinitely’. Curiously, the Conservatives were the only party to mention the climate: ‘the world's resources of fossil fuels will come under increasing strain during the 21st century; so may the global environment if the build-up of carbon dioxide the so-called "greenhouse effect" significantly raises temperatures and changes climates’.

So all the political parties agreed that fossil fuels, including coal, would continue to be needed in the foreseeable future. They recognised that North Sea oil was finite and thus there was a need to conserve fossil fuel stocks by the greater use of renewable sources. The main disagreement was over the use of nuclear with only the Conservatives unambiguously supporting it. In the event no new nuclear power stations were authorised during the next quarter century. So during this period we lost a reliable source of energy, coal, and failed to invest in another reliable source, nuclear.

The discovery of ‘greenhouse gases’ dates back to the 1890s, but concern that they may lead to global warming only began in the late 1980s. This is unsurprising as between 1940 and the mid 1970s global temperatures fell despite CO2 continuing to increase. The biggest concern during the 1970s was the fear that we may be entering a new ice age caused by pollution from fossil fuels dimming the amount of sunlight reaching the surface of the planet, as outlined here. (http://bit.ly/27RaoNr)

So for well over a century until the present time the science has remained the same namely that the existence of greenhouse gases raises the global temperatures by a sufficient amount to allow human civilisation to exist, and that without them most of the global population would freeze. Despite the unchanging nature of the science, since the late 1980s climate alarmism has continued to grow exponentially, based on nothing more than computer projections, and predictions about how the climate might respond if these projections were ever realised.

There is currently a target to try and limit the global increase in temperature to 1.5 degrees. However, the baseline for this figure is the end of the little ice age more than two centuries ago. The alarmists believe that this was a period when the climate was supposedly in perfect equilibrium, but this is far from the case. During that time Europe regularly suffered bitter winters and poor harvests. The 1.0 degree rise since then has provided much of the world with a more benign climate. It should be remembered that far more people die in cold weather than in hot weather.

If the past is any guide the projections for global temperature rise for the rest of the century have been greatly exaggerated. In reality, with so many variables and unknown factors, it is impossible to predict what global temperatures might be at any given time in the future. The alarmism over ‘climate change’ is not scientifically driven as repeatedly claimed, but is motivated by a Marxist political agenda to destroy the capitalist system. Protest organisations such as Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil are nothing more than a fake environmental cover for the Occupy movement that was active a decade ago. The government should stop surrendering to their agenda, concentrate instead on developing reliable sources of energy, and end the folly of trying to meet the net zero target.

The zombie party

What are we to make of the death agonies of the Conservative Party which has dominated the news during the past few months? This was a political force which gained an eighty seat majority less than three years ago. Yet it has now become an embarrassing international joke, with prime ministers, chancellors and other cabinet ministers arriving and departing in double quick time. The journalist Peter Hitchens has previously dismissed the Tories as ‘the zombie party’, and recent events have confirmed the accuracy of his analysis. So how has this once stable and powerful political party been reduced to such a pitiful state?

The problem with the Conservative Party is that it hasn’t been remotely conservative since the mid 1960s, and even then was beginning to show signs of appeasing its political critics rather than defending traditional core values. The Tories have presided over a gradual incremental process of surrender. This post attempts to outline how they increasingly started to dance to the tune of their opponents, rather than provide much needed opposition to the pernicious and subversive agenda propounded by the highly vocal, cultural Marxist left.

So briefly, over the years the Tories have failed to support grammar schools and academic excellence, they have allowed open ended third world immigration that has created ethnic ghettoes, they have encouraged no fault divorce which has resulted in millions of broken families, they have pandered to the vocal homosexual lobby by introducing same sex ‘marriage’, endorsed gay pride parades and indoctrination in schools. They have presided over a vast range of intrusive equalities legislation which privileges minorities, endorsed so called ‘hate crimes’ which suppress free speech, accepted the transgender agenda which defies biological reality, embraced the climate change hoax with the unattainable and burdensome net zero target, and introduced totalitarian measures to curb personal freedom during the covid epidemic.

All of these are contrary to traditional conservative values, and by adopting them the Tories have made themselves indistinguishable from their political opponents, but with one big difference. Labour, Liberal Democrats, Greens and Scottish & Welsh Nationalists all believe in these policies, whereas the Conservatives have been dragooned into supporting them because of their cowardice in not standing up to the intimidation of the politically correct left, through their campaign of abuse, employing pejorative slogans such as racist, homophobia etc, to silence opposition.

On economic affairs the Conservatives record has been poor with periods of high unemployment, soaring inflation, prolonged austerity and low growth. Currently they cannot make up their minds whether to pursue an irresponsible dash for growth or to deflate the economy through public spending cuts. On energy, their policies have made no sense, closing scores of dependable coal fired power stations and replacing them with unreliable sources such as wind and solar. They have privatised natural monopolies such as water, electricity and gas, replacing them with remote cartels offering a fake competition supervised by a toothless bureaucracy. They have replaced a unitary passenger rail system with a state subsided, impenetrable labyrinthine structure.

As a consequence of the Tories ineptitude Labour now has an unassailable lead in the opinion polls with the near certain result that they will win the next general election. The only real achievement during the Conservatives time in government was leaving the European Union. This is now at risk since there is nothing to prevent an exultant Labour Party from overturning their current policy of accepting the result of the referendum. Such is their poll lead they can now successfully campaign on a promise to rejoin the EU and still achieve a significant majority. They are very unlikely to pass over such an opportunity given the huge support for the EU amongst their activists.

So the recent meltdown of the Conservative Party will result in a Labour government for an extended period of time, that will very likely reverse Brexit and introduce yet more oppressive restrictions on individual freedoms in pursuit of their subversive identity politics agenda. Meanwhile ‘the zombie party’, through its incompetence, has disenfranchised huge swathes of the British electorate.

Blast from the past 2 – Tony Blair

This is the second post taken from the predecessor to this blog. It was written just after Tony Blair left Downing Street as prime minister in 2007, and offers an assessment of his achievements and failures whilst he held that office. This is the post in full:-

So, he has finally gone. What are we to make of Tony Blair’s ten years in Downing Street? First, to get them out of the way, let’s acknowledge his successes. His government managed to keep the economy on an even keel, inflation remained low and there was no great hike in unemployment, as happened under the Tories. Underinvestment in public services was reversed (although the extra money was not always wisely targeted), disproving the notion that public spending crowds out private activity, which continued at a high level. Despite strong pressure, we also stayed out of the Euro, thus retaining control of our economy. Taken together these are considerable successes, more than the Thatcher, Major and previous Labour administrations achieved. Unfortunately for politicians, the public are usually more inclined to condemn them for their failures than to give credit for their successes.

So what then are his failures? Regrettably, there are quite a few. To begin with the cultural Marxist permanent revolution that started in the Sixties became considerably more entrenched. The ability of the British people to govern themselves without outside interference was undermined still further, and normal family life continued to be subverted. Education stayed manifestly unreformed, the causes of chronic criminality remained unaddressed, the popular media continued its downward spiral of degradation, and control of our borders was lost completely. Let us examine the background to these failures in more detail.

Many people still seem unaware that they are guinea pigs in a massive Marxist social experiment. This has happened as a consequence of most levers of power coming under the control of a subversive elite who succeeded in projecting themselves in a positive light by the skilful use of fine sounding buzz words, such as ”progressive”, “tolerant”, “modern”, “forward looking”, “inclusive” etc. This hijacking of the social agenda has allowed the subversives to define what is worthy and acceptable, leaving ordinary people confused and powerless to respond. Those who question the Marxist agenda are either ridiculed or denounced as “reactionary”, “bigots” or a subjected to pejorative leftist newspeak terms such as “racist” or “homophobic” This process has been gradual yet incremental.

It is worth examining how the Blair government has taken forward this Marxist social agenda. It should be remembered that the main objective is to gradually transfer to the state, rights that were historically exercised by ordinary people either as individuals, families or private businesses. In short, state control by trusted politically sound apparatchiks and their careerist hangers on, is the name of the game. This process has continued for over four decades now, including the supposedly “right wing” administration of Margaret Thatcher.

The biggest casualty has been the further undermining of parliamentary democracy. This has been subverted on two fronts, by the expansion of the powers of the European Union, and interference by the European Court of Human Rights, as it misleadingly styles itself. Directives and judgements either by, or at the instigation, of these two supra national bodies now severely circumscribe what political parties can promise, let alone deliver, at general elections. The three major parties are all committed to maintaining the present system more or less, thus denying the British electorate from exercising true democracy, that is the ability to decide issues for ourselves as a nation.

The next target for subversion is to destroy the cohesion of society. Fifty years ago Britain was noted for its racial homogeneity, low crime, family stability, good manners and community spirit. Since then governments have encouraged huge levels of third world immigration, totally destroyed marriage, removed all effective means of discipline from teachers, weakened the authority of parents, undermined the police and criminal justice system, and allowed a degraded and trivialised media to develop. None of the legislative, judicial or administrative measures that allowed this to happen were ever included in any election manifesto. As a consequence, in many parts of Britain, a feckless underclass has developed resulting in crime ridden, socially and culturally fragmented communities, with dysfunctional families, feral youths, drug gangs and fatherless children.

Specifically, under the Blair government well over a million third world migrants entered the country, resulting in the ethnic cleansing of neighbourhoods and the lowering of wages for the most financially vulnerable. Marriage was downgraded to the same status as single parenthood, or the nonsensical concept of same sex “civil partnerships”. Teachers were left with no means of disciplining children other than by the drastic step of exclusion, and politically correct propaganda entered the curriculum at the expense of national traditions. Instead of acting as a deterrent on the beat, police officers spent most of their time completing paperwork, as did teachers in order to meet mostly unnecessary targets or bureaucratic directives. All of these were the direct consequence of the imposition of the “progressive” agenda promoted by the cultural Marxists in the government, BBC, universities, schools, trade unions, local government, state funded “charities”, and schools.

Don’t expect any change under Gordon Brown.

Unlike his successors, Tony Blair was lucky that there were no global financial crises during his watch. The cultural Marxist revolution which became entrenched under Blair has expanded still further under his successors, to additionally include the transgender nonsense. This demonstrates that Marxist subversion continues regardless of which major political party is in office. Although Britain has now left the European Union outside interference in our affairs still continues via global bodies such as the UN, WHO, IMF, WEF etc. So a lot still has to be done to restore much needed genuine conservative principles to our country.

How to be superficially black

A Labour MP of Asian ancestry has opined that the new Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng is ‘superficially black’. As a consequence she has been suspended from the party and has been denounced on all sides as a ‘racist’. She has since issued a ‘sincere and heartfelt’ apology for her ‘ill judged’ comments. Although she appears to share the left’s stereotypical notion about how all ‘people of colour’ should speak and behave, and the views they should hold, she has nevertheless hit upon a truth which few people appear willing to acknowledge.

The aspect which prompted the MP to speak out, and which has attracted much opprobrium, is ‘if you hear him on the radio you wouldn’t know he is black’. However, it has to be admitted that this observation is entirely correct. Kwarteng does speak with an educated English accent, which moreover is invariably grammatically correct. Although he was born in London, his parents are immigrants from Ghana, his mother becoming a barrister and his father an economist. Kwasi Kwarteng has had an illustrious academic career, gaining a scholarship to Eton, achieving a first in classics and history at Cambridge, and a PhD in economic history, also from Cambridge University. He is living proof that disproves the widely held belief that black Africans are ‘genetically’ mentally inferior to whites, a discredited trope which this blog has never advanced.

What singles out Kwarteng from other black politicians such as Diane Abbott and David Lammy, is that he does not play the race card. He does not have a chip on his shoulder about white society and ‘privilege’, nor does he claim that British society is ‘institutionally racist’, or bang on about the supposed evils of empire and colonialism. In other words, he has integrated into British society and has not sought any special privileges or favours for either himself or his race, or claimed membership of the black ‘community’.

He has worked hard and become very successful and is thus a perfect role model for all black people in Britain. If his example was followed by other members of his race there would be no black underclass, trapped in their ghettoes of fatherless families, hooked on petty criminality, casual violence, drug dealing and degenerate culture which alas are seen by many as the hallmark of the black ‘community’ in Britain and other western countries today. They might instead try and emulate Kwasi Kwarteng, and so raise themselves from their degrading lifestyle and aim to become ‘superficially black’, thereby reaping all the benefits of achievement and integration it would bring.

BBC Dimbleby delusion

Broadcaster David Dimbleby has recently presented a short documentary series Days That Shook The BBC. In the second programme ‘David offers his personal take on crises that tested public trust in the corporation’. One such crisis involved him turning his attention to ‘the predatory paedophile and TV presenter, Jimmy Savile’.

Dimbleby describes the Jimmy Savile scandal as ‘one of the worst in the BBC’s history’. He denounces Savile as ‘a persistent paedophile who prowled the corridors of the BBC without anyone stopping him’. He continues ‘the man was a horror, it is extraordinary that the BBC should have failed to come up with the truth about Savile’. In fact what is extraordinary is that neither Dimbleby, nor anyone else at the BBC, has ever carried out any investigation into the veracity of the ITV Exposure programme which created the ‘scandal’ in the first place. Instead he has credulously swallowed the mendacious fabrications in the programme which have comprehensively deceived both the public and mainstream media, as summarised in this analysis http://bit.ly/2dybGYs

After his highly prejudicial introduction Dimbleby then turned his attention to the aborted Newsnight feature about Savile proclaiming that ‘it should have been the BBC story because they, Newsnight, had it’. Meirion Jones, the Newsnight producer of the proposed Savile feature, now makes an appearance, observing that shortly after Savile’s death he was ‘already looking at Savile and thinking that we need to tell the truth and we are in a position where we can do so’.

In the Dimbleby programme Jones falsely asserted that Surrey Police ‘believed Savile was a paedophile’, in fact no such claim was made. The CPS correctly decided there was insufficient evidence to prosecute as outlined in this previous post https://bit.ly/3gtDc9K On hearing this revelation the Newsnight editor Peter Rippon decided that there was no longer any justification for going ahead with Meiron Jones’s expose. He also had some concerns about the credibility of the main witness Karin, the apparent collusion between ex-Duncroft pupils, and the discovery that a Surrey Police letter claiming that Savile was ‘too old and infirm’ to be prosecuted was a forgery. Meirion Jones strongly disagreed with this decision believing that it was necessary to expose Savile as a ‘paedophile’, as this would put a stop to the broadcast of the Christmas Savile tribute programme the BBC was planning, to which he had taken strong exception.

So why was this BBC producer in a position to ‘tell the truth’ immediately after Savile’s death. The reason was that he is the nephew of the headmistress of Duncroft school and as a child had witnessed visits of Savile there in the mid 1970s. He had formed a fixation in his own mind that Savile was visiting the school to sexually abuse teenage girls. He had made contact with some former pupils on the Friends Reunited website, and one of them Karin was making veiled accusations against Savile. Following Savile’s death Jones contacted Karin and she agreed to be interviewed on camera.

The programme then goes on to show extracts from the interview with Karin. She claimed that Savile, in exchange for sexual favours, arranged for her to go to BBC Television Centre and appear on his TV show. Both Meirion Jones and Dimbleby uncritically accept that Karin is telling the truth, but fail to ask themselves a few obvious questions. To begin with she claimed to be 14 at the time, but evidence has since emerged that she was within a few weeks of her sixteenth birthday. Both Savile and Karin would have known that the decision on which girls would be chosen to attend the TV show would rest with the headmistress, and that Savile would be unable to influence her decision. Moreover, as Duncroft was an approved school and the girls heavily supervised, it would have been near impossible for any male, however famous, to engage in sexual activities on the premises without it becoming widespread knowledge. In practical terms, Karin’s claim is, in reality, incredible.

The programme then goes on to outline the furore that overwhelmed the then BBC Director-General. As a result he decided to appoint a judge to discover ‘what the BBC knew about the criminal activities of Jimmy Savile’. The judge was Dame Janet Smith and the numerous shortcomings of her report and outlook are analysed in this previous post http://bit.ly/2mMrQza In the programme Dame Janet is provided with a platform to repeat her flawed conclusions and research that supposedly provided evidence of Savile’s guilt. Dimbleby does at least ask her the obvious question that ‘there were all these rumours swirling around but why didn’t the BBC pick up on them and allowed it to go on’?

The correct response would have been to point out that they were nothing more than rumours and that the BBC had never received any accusations about Savile through their complaints procedure. Instead, Dame Janet’s misleading response was that junior staff ‘knew that he took young girls in there, but they didn’t feel it was their responsibility to inform senior management’. In fact this supposition ignores the conclusion of her own report, since it found that neither senior nor junior staff had any evidence of Savile’s supposed offending on BBC premises, as all any of them had heard was rumour and gossip.

David Dimbleby now proceeds to give a distorted version of what the Newsnight feature was supposed to be investigating. He claims that Jones did not go to his editor about the failure of the CPS, but instead that he had ‘evidence that Savile was a paedophile’. Whilst it is true that this was the agenda of Jones it overlooks the fact that the Newsnight editor’s primary concern was always about how the police and CPS had handled the case. Once it was discovered that the CPS had decided the referral from the police in a professional and reasoned manner there would be no justification for broadcasting the Savile feature. Dimbleby is placing the obsessive belief of Meiron Jones that Savile was a ‘paedophile’ over the CPS conclusion that there was no justification for a prosecution.

Dimbleby then goes on to laud the BBC Panorama ‘investigation’ featuring Karin which was heavily influenced by the views of Meirion Jones. As a result of this programme BBC management carried out a complete u-turn away from supporting Peter Rippon’s decision for ‘sound editorial reasons’, to condemning his decision as ‘clearly flawed and wrong’, lambasting the BBC’s management system as ‘completely incapable’ of handling the matter, thereby creating ‘chaos and confusion’.

Dimbleby concluded that the ‘BBC’s failure over Savile’ was very badly damaging because ‘they failed to safeguard people on their premises, they hadn’t pursued the story against Savile when they had the opportunity to do so, and because they were pretending they weren’t even trying to investigate Savile but were looking at some other issue’.

Dimbleby’s conclusions are wholly unbalanced. He has accepted wholesale the version of events presented to him by Jones, and ignored completely the views of the Newsnight editor Peter Rippon who did not feature in the programme. Meirion Jones had for a long time been obsessed with the belief that Savile was sexually abusing girls when visiting Duncroft School. If he had been so confident of this belief he could have suggested a Newsnight investigation when Savile was still alive, rather than waiting to spring into action immediately after he died. Instead of manipulating and encouraging the wild claims of a couple of former Duncroft pupils, he could have personally quizzed his aunt about the background to Savile’s visits to the school. There is no evidence that he ever did this; instead he seems to have pursued his own vendetta against Savile as a means of bolstering his own career prospects and reputation by trashing the memory of the deceased celebrity.

Neither the Duncroft headmistress Miss Jones, nor any of her staff, heard any complaints that Savile had misbehaved during his visits. Moreover, neither BBC Newsnight investigators nor Surrey Police could find any other pupils to back up the allegations made by Karin, Meirion Jones and the ITV Exposure programme. Dimbleby’s failure to carry out an objective assessment of the BBC’s response reveals he is equally as culpable himself as the supposed failures for which he is condemning the BBC.

Blast from the past 1 – Afghanistan

Afghanistan has been in the news recently marking the first anniversary of western troops leaving the country. Back in 2009 the predecessor to this blog highlighted the futility of Britain’s military mission in that country. This is the blogpost from that time in full:-

Since the start of British military operations in Afghanistan, nearly 200 service personnel have died. It is worth considering what it is that our armed forces have been sent there to achieve. According to Gordon Brown it is "to break that chain of terror that links the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan to the streets of Britain".

There is no doubt that the ideology of the Taliban, the enemy our forces are fighting, is one that is as oppressive and repulsive as it is possible to imagine. However, in this respect its aims are little different to the religious primitivism and suppression of human rights which already exists in Saudi Arabia, a regime that we have rewarded with billions of pounds worth of arms sales. When the Taliban controlled Afghanistan they harboured the Al-Qaeda jihadist training camps. It was clearly necessary to take these out after the terrorist attacks on America in September 2001. Unfortunately, and perhaps predictably, Al-Qaeda moved over the border into Pakistan, a country with far stronger links to Britain.

As a result of the air strikes against the training camps, Al- Qaeda is now probably beyond our reach, and our forces are left fighting an endless conflict with enemy "insurgents" who are often indistinguishable from civilians. Although we know how many of our service personnel have been killed we have no real idea how many Afghan civilians have died as a result of coalition activity, but we can be sure that it is very considerably higher than our own military losses.

Gordon Brown's stated reasons for continuing this unwinnable war are a mendacious deception. Whatever the outcome it will have no effect on the threat Britain faces from jihadist terrorism. All the men behind the recent terrorist plots in Britain, both successful and failed, were either born here or were legally resident here. More to the point, virtually all were here as a result of the immigration policies pursued and supported by all the main political parties. The numbers of such people are continuing to increase, mainly but not exclusively as a result of arranged marriages. Thus the sea in which these potential fifth columnists swim is continuing to expand, and the threat they pose increases accordingly. Consequently, the lives of British soldiers are being lost needlessly whilst the real threat to our security is being ignored.

Enoch Powell long ago warned that "we must be mad, literally mad" to allow open ended immigration on this scale from such a source. But even he failed to foresee the deadly nature of such crazy policies. The war in Afghanistan is the unintended but direct consequence of past and present British governments' reckless encouragement of third world immigration, since without it we would be immune to global jihadism.

This analysis has clearly stood the test of time. Over 200 more service personnel have been killed in Afghanistan since 2009 and the number of civilians killed there during that period has been enormous. Since then there have also been numerous jihadist terrorist atrocities committed in both Britain and other European countries, all of them involving people admitted through reckless immigration policies. Given the ever increasing number of these potential fifth columnists the ‘chain of terror’ mentioned by Gordon Brown has most certainly not been broken, despite our withdrawal from Afghanistan. Thus the inescapable conclusion is that British government intervention in that country has had no lasting impact and our soldiers killed there died in vain.

Rolf is innocent OK

One of the biggest miscarriages of justice in Britain during the present century has been the conviction of the entertainer Rolf Harris following several allegations of historic sexual offences. The full background to his trials is outlined in a recent book by William B. Merritt who was his defence team’s specialist investigator. His revelations confirm what many have suspected that Rolf was innocent of all the charges brought against him, and that he was the victim of an organised campaign by the authorities to obtain celebrity convictions in the wake of the Jimmy Savile furore.

Rolf Harris was found guilty of all twelve charges he faced made by four accusers during his first trial in 2014. He was one of a number of aging celebrities who attracted a police investigation arising from the hoax ITV Exposure programme which peddled numerous fabrications against Jimmy Savile, summarised here http://bit.ly/2dybGYs . The fallout from this duplicitous programme created widespread outrage that Savile had ‘escaped justice’ for all the many ‘crimes’ he was posthumously found guilty of in the kangaroo court of public opinion, fomented by a hysterical campaign of demonisation whipped up by the media and some politicians. Under the aegis of the Metropolitan Police’s Operation Yewtree a witch hunt of well known celebrities was instigated to deliver scapegoats to appease the baying mob. They struck gold with their biggest scalp, Rolf Harris.

It is worth examining each of the accusers’ claims during his first trial. The first and most damaging was that Rolf carried out an indecent assault against an eight year old girl while attending an event at a small community centre in Havant, Hampshire. This was alleged to have taken place in autumn 1969, nearly 45 years before the trial. No evidence was presented that Rolf Harris had ever visited this community centre. Police investigations were unable to track down any local residents who could recall his attendance there. At the time Rolf was a major TV star and his appearance would almost certainly have generated enormous publicity in such a location. Given the complete lack of any corroborating evidence it is a mystery why this charge was allowed to stand. Despite all this the jury found Rolf Harris guilty and his accuser received £22,000 in compensation.

During this first trial Rolf Harris did not employ his own investigative team. Instead his defence team had to rely on the evidence obtained by Operation Yewtree officers, which the specialist investigator Mr Merritt described as ‘later exposed as being inept and biased’. Rolf appealed against the Havant community centre conviction and this time employed a team of investigators to uncover evidence that should have been presented at his trial. The outcome of their research was that many new facts came to light which proved that Rolf Harris had never attended this community centre, and that his accuser must therefore have been lying. In November 2017 the three appeal judges unanimously agreed that Rolf’s conviction on this charge was unsafe, and his conviction was quashed. However, the false accuser still retained her compensation and she never faced a charge of perjury, showing that the trial was less about justice and more about pursuing the ‘believe the victim’ agenda.

The second accusation against Rolf was that he indecently assaulted a 13 year old girl during the recording of the BBC TV game show It’s A Knockout. This allegedly took place nearly forty years previously in a Cambridge park. The complainant testified that this event had taken place in 1975 at Parker’s Piece, a green in the centre of Cambridge. In reality the TV recording took place at another site, the Cambridge City football ground. Despite getting the location wrong the accuser’s account was accepted by the prosecution. Rolf’s defence team produced irrefutable evidence that he could not have appeared at this event as at the time he was performing in a concert in Canada. However, Rolf then made a claim that was to cost him dearly when he stated that he had never been to Cambridge prior to 2010.

This attracted widespread publicity, and it prompted a new witness to come forward to inform the police that Rolf had participated in ITV’s Star Games programme from 1978. This event was held in yet another location known as Jesus Green to the north of the city centre. Television footage confirmed that Rolf Harris had indeed been a participant at this event. At the time this was revealed his defence team had based their case on refuting the 1975 claim. But in mid trial the judge made the highly prejudicial decision to allow this charge to be changed to incorporate the newly revealed 1978 event. This meant that the accuser’s age had been changed to 16, the venue had been changed, the TV programme had changed and the broadcaster had changed. No adjournment was allowed to provide the defence team an opportunity to investigate these changes, and the complainant was not recalled to the witness stand to explain the serious inconsistencies in her evidence. Additionally, the investigator Mr Merritt has uncovered evidence to suggest that in 1978 the accuser was living in Oxford, not Cambridge.

The prosecuting counsel took full advantage of Rolf’s belief that he had never visited Cambridge before 2010, with the underhand objective of convincing the jury that he had lied deliberately to cover up his appearance at the Star Games in 1978. This was entirely false as Rolf Harris would have attended thousands of events during his career. It was common practice to bring celebrities by coach to these kinds of events, held in parks that are interchangeable with hundreds of others throughout the country. Over three decades later Rolf would have had no reason to recall that the Star Games event had been held in Cambridge. Despite all the inconsistencies in the evidence Rolf Harris was found guilty of this charge.

The third accuser accounted for seven of the charges brought against Rolf Harris at his first trial. She had been a close friend of Rolf Harris’s daughter for many years and was the first to contact the police with her complaints. He was accused of grooming her when she was in her early teens. Rolf Harris admitted that he had sexual relations with her after she had turned 18, but that this had always been consensual and continued intermittently until she was in her late twenties.

After their relationship ended she telephoned Rolf to ask for £25,000 to finance a bird sanctuary in which she had an interest. Rolf Harris refused her request, the result of which was that the accuser’s parents were then told about their affair and Rolf was threatened that the newspapers would be informed if he did not give her the money. The accuser’s father wrote to Rolf to inform him that he was disgusted with his behaviour. Rolf burnt this letter but eventually reconsidered by deciding to reply asking for forgiveness, but making clear that all sexual activity had been consensual. This letter was used extensively by the prosecution, and was distorted to make it appear as a confession when in reality it had been sent as an issue of conscience.

One particular comment in Rolf’s reply to the father would cause him problems. During a holiday he told the accuser when she was 13 that she ‘looked lovely in her bathing suit’, which the accuser as an adult retrospectively distorted as being ‘just the same as physically molesting her’, which is of course utterly delusional. This correspondence took place in the mid 1990s but the accuser waited until November 2012 before contacting the police. The police held numerous interviews with the accuser during the course of which she changed part of her initial statement. Rolf’s defence counsel referred to this extensive police involvement as a ‘rehearsal’, describing the actions of the Yewtree officers as ‘grooming a witness’. Despite the lack of any real evidence Rolf Harris was found guilty on all seven charges.

The fourth accuser was a 15 year old member of an Australian theatre youth group on a five week tour of England in 1986. She accounted for three of the charges against Rolf, claiming that he had carried out indecent assaults against her in a pub during an informal dinner. Nobody in the crowded pub had noticed anything untoward, nor did the accuser tell anyone at the time about what had supposedly happened to her. Rolf Harris denied the allegations made against him pointing out that there were inconsistencies in her evidence concerning the timing.

This accuser first contacted the British police when the allegations against Rolf were being extensively covered in both the British and Australian media. However, before doing this she had previously contacted an Australian publicist who agreed to sell her story through his media contacts. He obtained a contract for A$60,000, but the publishing outlet interested in her story insisted that she must first report her allegations to the police which she did. As a result Operation Yewtree detectives flew to Australia to take a statement from her, but with a strange lack of professionalism, appeared unconcerned that she had sold her story to the media prior to the trial.

During the trial this accuser claimed that the assaults took place at the start of the tour and because she had been so affected by what had happened she lost about a stone in weight during the tour, an outcome that appears highly unlikely. However, research carried out by Rolf’s defence team proved that the pub dinner took place near the end of the tour. When challenged about this she responded that it had taken place so long ago and she could not be expected to remember everything. It was also discovered that the arrangement of the seating and the tables in the pub made it impossible for an assault to have take place as she described that involved sitting on Rolf’s lap. Despite all the inconsistencies the jury again found Rolf Harris guilty on all three charges.

As well as a lack of any real evidence each accusation appears to be highly improbable on practical grounds. Three of the accusations occurred in crowded venues or events where there would have been plenty of witnesses. Such behaviour would be reckless, and carrying out a sexual assault in such circumstances appears almost incomprehensible by a celebrity likely to be under constant observation by the public. The remaining accuser, the close friend of Rolf’s daughter, appears to have been happy to be a regular visitor to the Harris home in her teens when the alleged grooming was supposed to have taken place. She appears to have never raised Rolf’s alleged grooming behaviour with her friend, his daughter. Moreover, even when she was demanding money from Rolf she never accused him of carrying out any illegal acts when notifying her parents about their relationship.

The investigator Mr Merritt was critical of the way the police had conducted the case against Rolf. He considered that the police were ‘neither prepared, nor adequately trained, to handle the number of historic sexual abuse cases’ they were now being asked to investigate. As a result they changed their normal procedure for gathering evidence. Rather than seeking evidence that could stand on its own, they undertook fishing expeditions to persuade women to ‘come forward’ to make allegations against celebrities. This was done on the theory that ‘they can’t all be wrong’.

This assumes that everyone who came forward was honest and nobody would make a false allegation tempted by the promise of significant financial compensation coupled with an assurance by the police that they would be believed. Since there would be no risk of prosecution, as shown by the bogus Havant claim, unscrupulous opportunists would have nothing to lose by making false accusations. Not all of these are necessarily made by compensation seekers; some can bear a grudge and seek revenge, whereas others are subject to false memories, often prompted by questionable therapy techniques.

Mr Merritt is critical of the bad character evidence that Rolf was confronted with at his trial. These witnesses were used to bolster the evidence of the complainants whose own evidence was regarded as too weak to stand on its own. According to Mr Merritt, the police refused to carry out ‘even the most basic checks to ensure that the evidence being provided by a bad character witness is genuine’ adding that the police ‘chose to accept anyone who was prepared to slate Rolf Harris’. At the commencement of his first trial Rolf had no previous criminal convictions and there was nothing untoward in his history. Despite this the prosecution went to great lengths to convince the jury that there was a ‘dark side’ to Rolf Harris, insinuating that he was a sexual predator, experienced in grooming young girls.

As a result of his convictions a further seven women made allegations of sexual assault against Rolf. They resulted in eight fresh charges which Rolf Harris faced in two trials held in 2017. This time Rolf did not make the huge mistake at his first trial of relying on the police to carry out an investigation. Instead, he appointed a team of private investigators led by Mr Merritt. As a result of the thoroughness of their enquiries they were able to provide compelling evidence that Rolf was innocent of all the charges made against him at the two later trials. Full background details on how this information was gathered are provided in Mr Merritt’s book. As a result Rolf was acquitted of all the later charges.

One can only agree with the conclusion of Mr Merritt that the ‘conduct of the Operation Yewtree detectives and investigators, in overlooking and ignoring evidence that supported Rolf Harris’s innocence, cost him both his freedom and his good reputation’. There have been many calls for a retrial. Although, due to his advanced age there are questions as to whether Rolf would be willing to endure further legal proceedings, a retrial appears to be the only realistic option if he is to clear his name and reclaim his reputation.

How to topple a prime minister

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has won a confidence vote by 211 votes to 148. Whilst hardly a ringing endorsement it should be remembered that it was an improvement on the 160 votes he achieved from 312 MPs in the parliamentary leadership contest over Jeremy Hunt in 2019. The Conservative Party is a broad coalition which ranges from those who would be much happier as members of the Liberal Democrats, to those who against all the odds still continue to espouse traditional conservative principles. So there will always be a significant number of MPs who would prefer an alternative leader for reasons of personal character or policy differences.

Boris Johnson is not a conservative in any meaningful sense of the word as in reality he is a social liberal. He supports the net zero policy on climate change, was an enthusiastic attendee at ‘gay pride’ marches when London Mayor, appears unconcerned about open ended immigration from all around the world. He retains invasive and divisive ‘equality’ legislation, demonstrates minimal opposition to delusion transgender thinking, has done nothing to curb the growth in so called ‘hate crime’ legislation, supports same sex marriage but has introduced measures to further undermine traditional marriage. Many Conservatives have accused him of presiding over the expansion of socialist economic policies. So by any definition he is a long way from being a true conservative.

Nevertheless he is despised by the liberal politically correct class. This is because more than any other individual he delivered a victory for Brexiteers in the EU referendum. This was the first occasion in decades that liberals had suffered a reversal in their creeping, gradualist yet vociferous political agenda, and their fury knew no bounds as shown by the no holds barred campaign to overturn the referendum decision. Moreover, since becoming Tory leader he had the temerity to deliver a Conservative government with a huge majority, which further increased liberal loathing.

Since that election victory liberals have mounted a vocal campaign to destroy Boris Johnson’s premiership. Until late last year this had gained relatively little traction with the electorate. But matters changed when after repeated attempts the Metropolitan Police agreed to opposition requests to investigate the alleged breaches of covid regulations in Downing Street. The campaign to demonise the Prime Minister on this matter was orchestrated by the opposition parties and enthusiastically taken up by the BBC and other liberal minded media outlets.

For months on end the news agenda was dominated by a continuing drip-drip of revelations under what became known as ‘Partygate’, the primary instigator being the supposedly politically neutral BBC. Hardly a day went by without the public being informed of potential illegal gatherings at Number Ten, all supposedly presided over by Boris Johnson. The most egregious emotionalism was employed, particularly by Labour leader Keir Starmer. Wholly outrageous comparisons were made between grieving individuals being unable to visit dying relatives at a time when Downing Street staff were accused of ‘partying’. Those employing this kind of unprincipled emotional blackmail never asked themselves in what way would those experiencing grief have been affected by the events in Downing Street.

It is still unclear why any of the gatherings at Downing Street and Whitehall investigated by the police were contrary to covid regulations. It would clearly have been a breach if outsiders had been invited to social events but no evidence appears to have come to light that this occurred. Everyone at the ‘parties’ appears to have been a member of staff present at their workplace, socialising with colleagues who they would have worked with together throughout the same day. The only difference is that food and drinks were being consumed, and the conversation may have been primarily social rather than work related. Thus nothing was being done that would have added to the spread of covid as everyone involved had already engaged, through normal workplace activities, in the kind of close physical contact which would have facilitated the spread of the virus. So they are being demonised and criminalized solely for consuming food and drink in the workplace.

Despite all this the Partygate issue has successfully alienated many voters against both Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party. The mantra has taken hold that lawmakers should never be lawbreakers. But as outlined above it is very unclear whether any laws have really been broken since nobody knows the criteria used by the police in deciding who should be issued with fixed penalty notices. Despite all the fuss Boris Johnson received just one fine, for the bizarre ‘crime’ of accepting a birthday cake in his office, which he did not solicit and which he was not involved in the presentation. It is a mystery why he never appealed against this outrageous abuse of the criminal justice system.

The job of Prime Minister is to preside over the running of the country, concentrating on issues of national and international importance. It is not his responsibility to act as an office manager as plenty of senior civil servants are employed to oversee the smooth running of Downing Street. No Prime Minister should ever become involved in the minutiae of office management or in supervising the behaviour of the workforce, which would be a very poor use of his valuable time that should be more productively employed on far more important matters. So his claim that he was unaware of any Downing Street social activities is entirely credible.

So the campaign to destroy the premiership of Boris Johnson has succeeded in severely weakening him. He has not yet been toppled but we can be sure that this operation, led by the subversive mouthpiece the BBC, will continue until its objective has been achieved. This is the modus operandi used by liberal activists to brainwash the public through their distorted manipulation of the media, promoting through relentless negative tactics their one sided agenda to blacken the reputation of their opponents.

Is the covid hysteria finally over?

Covid infections are currently running at over 100,000 per day, significantly higher than during the lockdowns, yet neither the media nor politicians appear to be paying much attention. Nobody is any longer arguing that we should all stay at home, wear masks in shops and on public transport, get tested frequently, or maintain social distancing to ‘control the spread’. So why are most people now behaving in this apparently reckless fashion when covid has most certainly not gone away?

Part of the answer is that virtually everybody has either been triple vaccinated, and/or gained natural immunity by contracting covid. As a result if they do become infected again they are appreciably less likely to die or become seriously ill. So the element of fear for most people has considerably diminished. There is also a general acceptance that because the Omicron variants are so contagious any curbs or restrictions on behaviour are pointless as everyone is now vulnerable to infection despite the precautions. So the question that now needs to be asked is whether the lockdowns and restrictions were ever necessary in the first place? Could we not have responded to covid in the same way as for flu and stayed at home for the period when we felt ill?

The truth is that a large part of the media, politicians and the public succumbed to a mass hysteria generated by the alarmist fears of a very small coterie who claimed an expertise about how best to handle the response to the pandemic. In the UK this source was the tiny but highly influential group of people on the Government’s SAGE committee who were allowed to impose their outlook on the rest of the nation. They asserted that they were ‘following the science’ with the result that politicians, media and public were unable to challenge their recommendations since, in a climate of fear, they were all unwilling to overrule the perceived authority of this supposedly expert elite.

In reality the science of covid was very uncertain in the early stages. Nobody really knew how contagious it was, who it was most likely to affect, what caused the spread of the virus, or how serious it would be when caught. The panic began in Italy with images of people dying on trolleys after hospitals were overwhelmed. The Italian government imposed a national lockdown, and similar lockdowns were quickly implemented in other European countries. By the time the virus caught hold in Britain the media and opposition parties were all clamouring for a lockdown. In March 2020 the government duly imposed a national lockdown for three weeks to ‘flatten the curve’.

It would be pointless with hindsight to criticise the government for this decision, as they were under enormous pressure faced with a new virus of unknown severity. They quickly introduced a number of new temporary ‘Nightingale Hospitals’, but in the event these were scarcely used. Meanwhile the NHS prioritised treating covid patients, thus creating the current lengthy backlog of cases as the treatment of patients with less serious medical conditions was delayed. It would be nearly three months before the lockdown was lifted and restrictions were gradually relaxed during the summer 2020.

Infections fell to a very low level in summer 2020 but bizarrely the government chose that moment to mandate the use of masks on public transport and in shops. No reason was ever given for this change, and no evidence has been provided since that masks make any difference to the spread of the virus. This was confirmed by the Danish study, the fact that infections decreased rapidly in the spring of 2020 without masks, the fact that they rose sharply in the autumn of 2020 when mask wearing was compulsory, and later in the pandemic, when Scotland retained compulsory mask wearing when it had been abandoned in England, yet Scotland still suffered the highest rates of infection in the UK. More disturbingly mask wearing became a virtue signalling fetish for those on the left of politics. Witness the absurd spectacle of the opposition benches fully masked up after the restrictions were lifted, at a time when the Conservative benches were almost mask free.

We are supposed to be living in a freedom loving democracy but during the period of covid alarmism the government was able to impose the most draconian restrictions on the population at the stroke of a minister’s pen. What was worse was the almost total compliance by the public who accepted all the restrictions on their freedom with relatively little challenge. Anyone unwilling to conform to this agenda was quickly denounced as a ‘covidiot’, someone supposedly prepared to take risks with the public’s safety for their own selfish ends.

There was little debate as to whether the restrictions themselves might be a bigger threat to the public than covid. Adverse consequences were ignored such as delayed diagnoses and operations, loss of education to school children, permanent damage to the economy, the loss of many small business in hospitality and retailing, the devastation of the travel industry, the adverse effect on the mental health and wellbeing of the nation, and the curtailment of living a normal life for a whole population placed under what amounted to house arrest. The fear generated through covid alarmism trumped all of these concerns.

Yet despite all these adverse consequences the government imposed two further damaging lockdowns , aided and abetted by the opposition parties and the BBC who all wanted earlier, deeper and longer restrictions. The Welsh authorities imposed a well publicised ‘circuit breaker’ which achieved nothing but this did not prevent the alarmists calling for England to follow their lead. The Scottish regime as a matter of principle consistently imposed longer and deeper restrictions than England but in the end they made no difference to the eventual outcome.

So all the evidence shows that the lockdowns, social distancing, mask wearing and endless testing made little difference to the eventual outcome. Infections in Britain were close to the average, Sweden with far fewer restrictions did better, Peru with some of the severest restrictions ended up with the highest level of infections in the world. The death rate was about 0.3% of the population, almost all of whom were over the retirement age or suffered from long term conditions such as obesity or diabetics. So the government should now ‘do the right thing’ and issue an amnesty for all those convicted of a breach of covid regulations and return their fines.

The most disturbing element of the covid hysteria was not so much the totalitarian nature of the government’s response, but the self abasement of the public, happy to collaborate in their own subjugation. The explanation for this mass aberrant behaviour was the campaign of fear drummed up by the government, the opposition parties and the mainstream media, most particularly the BBC. The ramping up of fear has been the playbook of totalitarian regimes throughout the ages, and the authorities had no qualms about employing this technique to impose their will over covid.

The biggest danger for the future is that the political establishment, now realising how easy it is to manipulate the public into compliance with their agenda, will regard the covid response as a precedent and employ similar authoritarian measures in the future. So expect campaigns from vocal woke obsessives demanding similar levels of state control on such issues as the climate change hoax, homosexual proselytising, delusional transgender beliefs and still further capitulation to militant feminists, Islamists and black activists.

Liberals’ self hatred

For a long time British ‘progressives’ have been engaged in a hate campaign against themselves. As a matter of principle their default position is to despise their country, their culture, their race, their system of government and their class. This process has now reached absurd levels of self flagellation and delusion. White liberal racial guilt plays a large part in facilitating this process, as shown by the pernicious doctrine of ‘white privilege’. So it is worth examining one aspect of this deranged iconoclastic agenda which has recently started to manifest itself - the way that black people are currently portrayed in the media.

The issue of race has been the issue which more than any other has attracted the moral grandstanding of ‘progressives’. Paternalistic concerns for the supposed discrimination faced by ‘people of colour’, as we are now supposed to describe them, are merely an opportunist vehicle that has been co-opted by liberals to promote their own virtue signalling superiority. However, the sentiments are largely insincere, since liberals are no more likely to socialise or befriend black people than the average white person. In short, the race question is merely a platform amongst many others which the vocal left exploit for their wider political ends.

There appears to be a very simple rule amongst ‘progressives’ which is to invariably bend over backwards to accept the validity of a black person’s viewpoint, but to never give the benefit of the doubt to a white person in a similar situation. Our employment and race relations laws are all based on this assumption, and so can be used by black people to pursue their own self interests, in a manner that is not open to white people. The only exception to this outlook is when black people identify with, or express right wing views, when mysteriously they are treated with the same degree of contempt as whites. So the expectation of liberals is that their client groups should conform to approved stereotypical notions rather than to think for themselves.

Until about the early 1980s black people were largely invisible in advertising, and usually only appeared in TV dramas when portraying non-Europeans in realistic real life situations such as for example a government representative from an African country. This was regarded by most people as completely normal as well as perfectly acceptable, and there was absolutely no clamour from the public to introduce black characters into dramas were the audience would normally expect an exclusively white cast, or to bring more black faces into advertising.

But matters gradually began to change when black characters started to be introduced into drama situations that previously would have been exclusively white. The numbers were still relatively small, the assumption being that the public would gradually be more willing to accept the occasional black character as a legitimate feature of the storyline, and thus avoid alienating too many viewers who might prefer to watch programmes exclusively showing their own kind. This was in accordance with the policy of introducing small incremental changes as the most effective way of furthering the liberal agenda.

More proactive commentators criticised this approach as ‘tokenism’, demanding that more be done to improve ‘diversity’ and to increase the profile of black people in the media. Gradually the number of black characters started to increase, but the type of roles they played was circumscribed. They were very rarely portrayed as villains or criminals; instead they were disproportionately presented as the good guys fighting injustices, or occupying positions of higher rank or authority, bringing much needed guidance, advice and leadership to junior white colleagues.

In advertising, black faces first started to become apparent in publicity posters and documents issued by left wing local authorities. But commercial organisations still resisted breaking the white monopoly on imagery, presumably fearing that the inclusion of black faces would alienate many white people from buying their product. But eventually black faces started to appear in commercial advertisements also, and gradually these numbers started to increase. It was noticed that there was no pushback against this trend in the media, since to raise concerns would inevitably risk accusations of ‘racism’ and bigotry.

Today we have reached the absurd situation were more than 50% of advertisements feature black people, where mixed race couples are promoted as the norm, where nearly every TV drama has a disproportionate number of black characters, where historic costume dramas falsely and inaccurately include black characters, and where white historic figures are increasingly played by black actors. All this has occurred with little if any discussion or debate in the media. It is unclear who is driving this agenda, whether it is media and advertising regulators, or the management of commercial companies anxious to appease vocal woke activists or employees. But what it does demonstrate is the extent to which white liberals are consumed with guilt and self loathing for the newly discovered original sin of being born with white skin, an agenda that the mainstream media are too cowardly to challenge.

Boris vs Keir vs Jimmy

The prime minister has recently come under attack for repeating in Parliament a long standing claim on the internet that Sir Keir Starmer, when Director of Public Prosecutions, had personally failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile over alleged sex offences. Boris Johnson in rebuking Sir Keir in this way was clearly annoyed by the orchestrated campaign, led by the BBC and opposition parties, to destroy his premiership by drumming up public anger and hysteria over reports of workplace drinks at No.10 during lockdown. It is worth investigating whether Boris Johnson’s critique of Sir Keir has any merit.

The Surrey Police investigation into Savile has previously been outlined in this earlier blogpost http://bit.ly/2dybGYs. This took place during the 2007-9 period and covered three allegations. The first was that Savile had forced a pupil of Duncroft approved school to place her hand on his groin in the TV room, the second that Savile had kissed a choir girl visiting Stoke Mandeville hospital and put his tongue in her mouth, and the third that Savile had engaged in sexual activity with a pupil in a building known as Norman Lodge located in the grounds of Duncroft. The file was sent to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), then under the leadership of Sir Keir, and the decision was reached by the CPS was that there was insufficient evidence to warrant a prosecution.

As a result of the furore that ensued after the broadcast of the ITV Exposure programme in October 2012, the CPS, still under the leadership of Sir Keir, commissioned a report by Alison Levitt QC to investigate the reasons for not prosecuting Savile. Although the facts provided in her report are extensive, thorough and detailed, the analysis and conclusions are grossly unrealistic, almost bordering on the delusional.

The report was commissioned during the fallout from the ITV Exposure programme (the numerous fabrications presented in this were debunked in the previously mentioned blogpost). Like the BBC Smith report (outlined here http://bit.ly/2mMrQza) the Levitt report was based on the premise that Savile was a serial predatory sex offender and the conclusions and reasoning were tailored to conform to this belief. She claims to have ‘tried to ensure as far as possible that I have judged the cases on the basis of what was known at the time, rather than the information today’. But it is clear from reading the report that she has accepted wholesale the prevailing narrative about Savile’s supposedly predatory behaviour, and this has deeply influenced her outlook and findings.

Her report also covered an investigation by Sussex Police into a single separate allegation involving a woman in her early twenties. This occurred in 1970 but was not reported until 2008. Unlike the Surrey allegations Savile was never interviewed by police about this, so it is not possible to know his response. After discussion with the police the complainant decided that she was not prepared to take the case forward as ‘it was a long time ago and she did not have access to the information the police required’ declaring she did not want ‘any more hassle’ about the matter. In the circumstances it is clear the CPS decision not to prosecute was the only option available. With regard to the allegation relating to Norman Lodge at Duncroft the Levitt report agreed with the conclusion of the CPS that ‘no prosecution could have taken place because the behaviour complained of did not amount to a criminal offence’.

With regard to the two remaining allegations investigated by Surrey Police it should be noted that neither of the complaints were made by the individual allegedly assaulted. In the case of the Duncroft TV room incident the complaint was made by a former pupil who claimed to have witnessed the alleged incident. This involved Savile taking the girl’s hand and placing it on is groin. When interviewed by the police she said that ‘she did not think much of what had happened’ and did not want to make a statement. Savile denied that this had ever happened, pointing out that it would have been impossible with so many witnesses present. The incident appears to relate more to some teasing suggestive horseplay, than an assault of a sexual nature, and in any case Savile was the object of the claimed touching, not the girl.

With regard to the Stoke Mandeville hospital allegation the complaint was made by her sister, a former Duncroft pupil. It was alleged that as the sister was about to board the coach for home, Savile called her over asking for a goodbye kiss. The girl was expecting a kiss on the cheek but instead ‘he kissed her on the lips and put his tongue inside her mouth’. She was shocked by this incident but the only person she told about it was her sister. In a statement she declared that she ‘never considered going to the police about the incident. I thought it was so insignificant at the time. I think it would have been a waste of police time’. Savile denied the incident had taken place again pointing out it would have been impossible with so many witnesses present. It is difficult to disagree with the assessment of the girl that the police at the time would have shown very little inclination to investigate what most people would regard as a relatively trivial incident.

In both of these cases the CPS reviewing lawyer stated that the determining factor in reaching his decisions was that he had been told by police that the alleged victims were ‘adamant’ that they would not go to court, and that one of them would ‘suffer’ if forced to take part in a prosecution. Given all this he took the view that ‘there was no point in considering the matter further as there was nothing more that could be done’.

In her report Alison Levitt disagreed with this approach. She ludicrously claimed that the allegations were ‘serious’ when in reality they were very minor and where even the alleged victims did not consider any need for the police to become involved. She makes much of the fact that none of them were informed that there were other complainants and that the CPS should have recognised this and ‘built’ a prosecution. She also claims that there was no collusion but in reality the former pupils making the complaints had been in contact on the Friends Reunited website.

The CPS was undoubtedly right not to prosecute, not only because those most affected refused to take part, but also because any jury would find it impossible to convict such relatively minor infractions, with such slender evidence, after such a long period of time. A prosecution in these circumstances would have been an abuse of the legal process, and any witnesses would likely have been torn to shreds by the defence counsel. Alison Levitt’s unbalanced conclusions can only have been made in an attempt to appease the baying mob outraged by the fabrications they had credulously swallowed after the ITV Exposure programme. The report however did confirm that in the case of the Stoke Mandeville kissing incident there was no mention of Savile previously ringing the girl’s home or her writing to him, as falsely claimed in the Exposure programme.

So it is true that Sir Keir Starmer was never personally involved in the decision not to prosecute Jimmy Savile, although it is somewhat surprising that he was never informed about a case involving such a well known national celebrity. Starmer accepted the finding of the Levitt report in full, which was clearly a disreputable and unprincipled attempt to distant himself from the entirely correct decision of his reviewing lawyer. In so doing he placed appeasing the public loathing of Savile over the facts and evidence of the cases, and the interests of natural justice.

Boris Johnson should also be condemned, not only for suggesting that Starmer was personally responsible for this decision and for his supposed ‘apology’ after the Levitt report, but also for assuming as truthful the grotesquely exaggerated nature of the complaints against Savile. This criticism can also be levelled at the aide of the prime minister who resigned, denouncing Johnson’s implication that Starmer ‘was personally responsible for allowing Jimmy Savile to escape justice’ through ‘an inappropriate and partisan reference to a horrendous case of child sex abuse’. She is completely wrong on both counts, as it is clear from her gross exaggerations that, like Johnson, before sounding off she had done nothing to investigate the facts behind the decision of the CPS not to prosecute Savile.

To conclude, the prime minister was right to condemn Sir Keir but for the wrong reason. He should have condemned him for disreputably failing to support his reviewing lawyer who made the absolutely correct decision not to prosecute Savile.