JANNER'S TRIAL OF THE FACTS ABANDONED

The "trial of the facts" in the case of Jenner and a multitude of people who claim that he molested them when they were children, was not destined to be a trial where punishment was meted out. 

Jenner's alleged dementia, the judge ruled, meant that that he was unfit to be tried or to take punishment should he be found guilty.

The trial was, rather, designed to give some sort of closure to his accusers and to highlight their cases against him. The state acknowledging their suffering as it were.

It was all quite proper under English law.

But it has been announced that, following his death, the trial will not go ahead.

I wonder why.

With George Thomas...and a party of children.

The judge had ruled that he would play no part in the trial; that it would be a trial, not of Janner, but of the facts in the cases. 

Whether he is alive or dead doesn't affect the capacity of the judge to hear that trial and to pronounce on it. He was incapable of giving evidence himself. Whether he was sitting at home alive, or not, and dead, makes no difference to that situation.

However, it seems the establishment will do whatever it takes to keep these matters under wraps and save "those and such as those" embarrassment, while people who allegedly suffered at Janner's hands are paid scant attention.

Whatever would have been the outcome, what an absolutely stinking rotten system.

ON ONE HAND A RATHER PATHETIC OLD MAN PAYING FOR SEX...ON THE OTHER HAND THATCHER'S MINISTERS AND THEIR EVIL

Mr Sewel in his Lordly costume... Note the hat...

It has been suggested that the Sun on Sunday yesterday, and the Sun today, reporting that Mr Sewel, the Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords has been caught in a sting, snorting cocaine, going with prostitutes, and wearing a bra, was motivated by party political revenge for the revelations that ex-Tory grandees from the Thatcher era, were indeed involved in child molestation and possibly murder in their murky pasts.

Really?

Let's be honest about this, taking cocaine is illegal (although as Niko points out on his blog, it's maybe something the Tories wouldn't be overly keen to make a big fuss about...as the video shows). 

I'm not sure what the law in England says about prostitutes, but I suspect that it's probably not legal to pay for sex. So there. He broke the law on two counts. 

As far as I remember there is nothing illegal about wearing a bra, no matter how silly it makes you look. We are told that he was unflattering in his comments about Tony Blair and David Cameron. Well, find me someone who's not... and, at least for the moment, that is still not against English law. (It never will be a crime in Scots Law.)

Another get up and another hat...goodness he does like dressing up.

On the other hand, the revelations that the Cabinet Office has been hiding papers which confirm a list of deviants in the Cabinet of Mrs Thatcher, and in the Establishment that surrounded her, is a very much more important and worrying thing...not least for the fact that people knew about it at the time and have done ever since and they did nothing, hid the papers, and lauded the miscreants plying them with highly paid jobs and titles. Although, I admit, the word 'miscreants' is such an understatement that it sounds ridiculous. 

By comparison a little old man from the middle reaches of the Establishment who snorts cocaine and who has to pay for sex is as of nothing. 

Of course, it's unfortunate, but utterly typical of what we're continually discovering about the UK Establishment, that the head of a committee on probity in one of the houses of parliament is rather less than squeaky clean when it comes to probity himself. 

But we're used to that sort of thing by now, and in the end, he has done no one but himslef any harm.

Or dressing down...
On balance I preferred the ones with the silly hats.

I don't know, or much care, whether he will face prosecution for drug taking or paying for sex. What I do know is that he has lost an £80,000 a year job, and will almost certainly have to retire from the House of Lords, although I understand there is no mechanism for relieving him of the title. Into the bargain he must know that hundreds of thousands of us all over the UK have been falling about laughing at the pictures, and will never hear his name or see his face again without a fit of giggling.

But, no one at all, or at least no one sane, will ever be laughing at what some of Thatcher's cabinet and its friends were up to.

No comparison.

As ye sew, Mr Evans, so shall ye reap!

This is absolutely typical of the Tories.

Nigel Evans was recently cleared of several very serious charges of sexual impropriety.

If you trust the English legal system, then you will believe that this proves him to be innocent of these crimes.

My sympathies are with anyone who is accused of something they did not do. When rape, a particularly nasty and universally despised crime, is among them, it is even more essential that an innocent person has the opportunity to defend himself.

But Mr Evans has discovered that, after being found not guilty, he cannot claim back his £130,000 bill for legal representation from legal aid.  And he’s not a happy chappie.

The thing is that, being a relatively law abiding person, and therefore never thinking that he would be in a position to make a claim, Mr Evans supported this arrangement when the current government bought in cuts to the legal aid bill.

Now he thinks it is unjust. 

In short, this arrangement is ok for other people, but not for Mr Evans.

There’s actually a point there for everyone who agrees with cuts to payments that help people who may need help. You simply never know when it is going to be you…

...who is unemployed for the first time;

...who has an accident or who contracts a horrible illness and can no longer work;

...who needs constant care;

...who has to go into a residential home.

Making the mistake of treating these issues like they only affect 'other people' has come back to bite Mr Evans on his bottom.

So maybe he would like to revise his stance on the newly introduced fees for taking a case to an employment tribunal.

He might, too, wish to reconsider his attitude to the cap on benefits and welfare, because with a bill for £130,000 to pay, he may be a lot closer to needing it than he would otherwise ever have thought himself to be.

Additionally, you have to wonder what a non privileged person would do if he or she were landed with a bill for £130,000 pounds to clear his name of a heinous crime of which he or she is innocent.

And we are all in this together…? My backside we are!
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I just saw this on Facebook... I read the story earlier in the Telegraph. Brogan seems to feel that it is understood in Downing Street that losing Scotland would be too much of a wound for a prime minister to continue with and that Cameron would definitely have to go.

But the referendum will take place in September and the UK election is in May...only 7 months later. 

A lot to do, to choose another leader, settle a manifesto, and get elected...

Interesting thought though: If he is right (and I doubt it), a NO vote is a vote to keep David Cameron.

The article (linked above) is worth a read for some of the other comments. He says that Cameron should throw himself into the fight for the union, establish an office in Glasgow (not Edinburgh) and base himself there for 3 months... 

Bring it on, I say.

ASIL NADIR TO RETURN TO FACE JUSTICE AND SUPPORT THE GOVERNMENT

I note from the pages of The Telegraph that Asil Nadir has decided to return to Britain to face the charges of fraud that he avoided by fleeing to Northern Cypress 17 years ago.

Because Northern Cypress is not recognised by the UK, there was, is, and can be, no extradition treaty, but Mr Nadir says that he is coming back of his own free will.

Apparently he was very much a part of the enterprise boom of the 1980s, building up a company called Polly Peck, which at its height was worth £1.7 billion, but which crashed with massive debts. It was alleged that Mr Nadir had transferred millions out of the company to himself.... leaving the business with debts of £1.3 billion.

His support for Mrs Thatcher’s government, vocal and financial, became an embarrassment to her as the alleged thefts became apparent.

In an interview with BBC’s Today programme Mr Nadir said the he believed the legal ''environment'' was right for him to return. He said that he was hoping to get a fair trial. He had not, he said, felt that he would get a fair trial back in the early 1990s.

He spent 3 years battling with 'immense injustice and tremendous abuse of power in Britain', he said. It was because of this and the consequent deterioration in his health that he fled, in a private jet, to Northern Cypress to recuperate. He has recuperated for 17 years during which time he has built a business empire in the Mediterranean country which is only recognized by Turkey. There he controls the Kibris newspaper and television group and exercises notable political influence.

In the interview he said that he hoped the new Government would be "wise enough and will think highly enough of Great Britain" to clear the matter, whatever that means. He did not rule out supporting the Government financially, arguing that there was nothing wrong with donating to a political party. He said that it was only fair if you approved of the policies of a Government, if you wanted to extend their power, that you should support them with financial donations.

I wonder what he thinks has changed about English law that it will take a different view of the intelligence and evidence that was built against him by the Fraud Squad, and I wonder why he thinks that the government, which he has promised to support financially (unless he’s banged up) would have any influence over the outcome of any trial.

Of course, it may all have been a fit up. The police in the early 90s were not always to be trusted. Maybe Mr Nadir got on someone's nerves; and of course he was "foreign", always a good reason for a bit of nastiness from Plod.

Whichever, I suspect that it wasn’t a very good idea to give that interview, now we know what he’s up to... and if the government does, in fact have any say what goes on in the courts, he may just have blown his chance of getting off.

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