Three degrees of falsehood, and ten degrees of the Eighth Circle

Last summer, from the web-site of the University of York’s Department of Mathematics (of all unlikely places to find any lit.crit), there was an exhaustive history of who and how the cliché originated about “lies, damn lies and statistics”. The conclusion, if somewhat fuzzy, declared the begetter was Sir Charles Dilke, but deriving it from many earlier variants.

Somewhat conveniently, if only for regional pride, was:

A query in Notes and Queries (7th Ser. xii) (1891 Oct. 10), p. 288, reads as follows:

DEGREES OF FALSEHOOD. – Who was it who said, “There are three degrees of falsehood: the first is a fib, the second is a lie, and then come statistics”?      ST. SWITHIN

According to Folklore 41 (3) (1930), 301 and 63 (1) (1952), 4–5, “St. Swithin” was a pseudonym used by Mrs Eliza Gutch (1840–1931), of Holgate Lodge, York.

They’re still at it!

The most blackened liar is the politician who twists a statistic to support a point. Here, from the letters page of this week’s Ham&High in front of Malcolm, we have a prime specimen:

Stephen Greenhalgh, London’s deputy mayor for policing and crime, writes:

Crime has fallen, but we want to boost public confidence and make London safer. [etc., etc.]

A Google search suggests Greenhalgh issues, and re-issues press releases on this line, regurgitates similar statements on public occasions, quite indefatigably. There’ll probably be another one along in the morning. That’s why the grateful citizens of London pay him something around £100,000 a year, plus expenses and pension rights.

Let him who is without sin …

Meanwhile, Greenhalgh is himself not above suspicion, and Dave Hill has him in his sights:

As the police watchdog considers whether to investigate Boris Johnson’s policing deputy Stephen Greenhalgh over alleged illegal conduct by public officers of Hammersmith and Fulham council when he was its leader, it is instructive to consider the passion with which Greenhalgh supported the ambitious redevelopment scheme at the heart of the affair – the Earls Court project.

And then, lest we forget, there was the City Hall groping:

Boris Johnson‘s deputy mayor for policing has apologised “unreservedly” following an allegation that he molested a female member of staff in a city hall lift.

Stephen Greenhalgh, the former Tory leader of Hammersmith and Fulham council, who now holds day-to-day responsibility in the mayor’s office for policing and crime, allegedly patted a female member of staff on the bottom while in a lift last month.

Last seen above Lenin’s tomb

Put Greenhalgh into an ill-cut Soviet era suit, and one instantly lines him up alongside the Bulganins,  Malenkovs and Berias for a Red Square May Day parade:

So, for the occasion, let’s adapt a Stalinite apothegm:

It’s not the crimes that count, it’s how, and by whom they are counted.

In the exact case of crime statistics, the Guardian‘s Datablog, Facts are sacred, ran the slide-rule over the official numbers a while ago. It noted all kinds of jiggery-pokery:

• A concurrent but separate ONS publication shows that the rate of police recorded crime has fallen more quickly than the rate of reported crime found in the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW).
• It’s important to bear in mind that today’s release focuses on police recorded crimes. These are provided to the Home Office by police authorities and forces, not all of whom collect data with the same precision according to a 2007 audit. This is problematic because it means that a higher number in a given area may indicate an improvement in reporting by police rather than a rise in criminality.
• … crimes recorded by police are unlikely to represent the total number of crimes that take place. To understand this better, it’s useful to also consider the CSEW which asks people face-to-face about their experiences of, attitudes about and perceptions of a range of crimes.
• The gap between police-recorded and survey-reported crime has always been significant, but the distance between the two has widened. In 2004/05, there was an effective recording rate of 52.8%, while in the latest statistical release, this figure has dropped to 42.4%

And even this:

• Another of the more interesting figures is that of the perception of crime. The CSEW asks people whether they think crime is getting worse where they live and nationally. So, people think crime is getting worse – but not where they live. It’s the gap between what we know is going on and what we think is going on.

That last one, where Malcolm is sitting, means that the propaganda of stooges like Greenhalgh may be working.

Put the whole shebang together, and the only reasonable conclusion is:

Crime figures aren’t worth the ink used to print them.

Conjugation: I’m usually a law-abiding citizen, you’re a bit dodgy: that bloke ought to go down for a long stretch.

Meanwhile the really big crimes — Harry-the-Horse and  the multinationals who don’t pay taxes, the fraudsters who exploit concessions for charity to rip us all off — are officially not crimes at all.

Then there’s the little stuff:

It’s illegal to ride a motorcycle or drive using hand-held phones or similar devices.

The rules are the same if you’re stopped at traffic lights or queuing in traffic.

It’s also illegal to use a hand-held phone or similar device when supervising a learner driver or rider.

Malcolm would give fair odds that at least the second of those requirements is not known to the average driver. Yet — note — all are “illegal”, which means “against the law”. And Malcolm, waiting for a few minutes at bus-stops in north London, counts five, six or more drivers quite blatantly disregarding the law, frequently in full view of that CCTV camera that collect fines if you pause for thirty seconds to allow a passenger to get out (£50 free and for nothing to the local authority).

Here’s a writ that goes unenforced on a daily basis:

Bernard Hogan-Howe [the Met's Commissioner] indicated that he believed the current punishment of three penalty points and a £60 fine was not a strong enough deterrent for drivers.

By increasing the punishment to six points, drivers would be banned from the road if they were caught twice for the offence within three years.

Writing on the Met’s website, the commissioner said this would make drivers take the law on driving while on the phone more seriously and improve road safety.

That interprets as we don’t bother to enforce the law. We expect you, the potential offenders to understand and obey the law. But if we’re forced to apply the law, we expect it to have teeth. If only because it makes us look as though we’re doing our job. And, if the offence was significantly up-graded, we’d have more motivation, and look even better. Oh, and by the way, if you’re phoning and driving, don’t mow down that child, because — if you do — we have to check your phone records, which is a real fag.

That makes all the more remarkable the coincidence, nay the the assiduity of the Met Police, in catching (and so banning) Chris Huhne for driving the Old Kent Road while phoning. And that, by coincidence, within weeks of him avoiding a ban for speeding by having his wife take the points.

Where does this place the Office of National Statistics, Deputy Mayor Greenhalge, and others? —

Destination: Malebolge

Shooting the messenger?

Here’s one that will have after-shocks:

A police constable with the diplomatic protection group has been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in a public office, Met Police say.

The officer was arrested late on Saturday and bailed on Sunday to return in January. He has been suspended.

The arrest was made by officers investigating how national newspapers came to publish police records of an incident at Downing Street.

In other words, the Met have thrown thousands at an internal investigation and pay for a suspended officer. Mitchell (a miserable non-apology for a ‘gentleman’) largely got away with it. OK, he lost office, but he was over-promoted, he owned his elevation to Cameron’s need to keep his right-wing ultras in line, and the nation is not greatly at a loss for dispensing with his services: in Sir George Young the Tory Party, parliament and the country have the better man.

Presumably the Met is still racing to catch up with its own serial failures (at far higher levels than any mere police constable) and complicities with the Murdoch press.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

When constabulary duty’s to be done, to be done …

… A policeman’s lot is not a happy one, happy one.

— William Schwenck Gilbert for The Pirates of Penzance.

• The picture (right) is the baritone Walter Passmore of the original production.
• The song was a favourite among London coppers, at least down to the mid-twentieth century. Malcolm heard it from his own (ex-PC) father’s lips.

Now that the dust settles on the dismal Plebgate business, now that Andrew Mitchell, a former UN peacemaker,  can polish his bike in peace, there’s still the odd bit of gristle to be chewed.

As we saw in yesterday’s Sindy, John Rentoul has come over all fair-minded:

I thought Cameron made a mistake in not insisting that Mitchell step down straight away. Which is not the same as saying that I thought Mitchell deserved to resign. Indeed, I thought he was more sinned against than sinning. Being told that it is “policy” to wheel your bicycle through the pedestrian gate is monstrous anti-cyclist discrimination (and jobsworthism of the highest order). Losing your temper and swearing at a police officer is a sin, obviously, but it may not be a crime. The Court of Appeal quashed a conviction last year, ruling that police officers are used to hearing the f-word, which is “rather commonplace”, and that it was unlikely to cause them “harassment, alarm or distress”. It was the police who, in breach of their rules, gave the story to The Sun.

OK … yawn … let’s move on …

Well, perhaps not. Put aside the “rather commonplace” adverbial reinforcer, and what are we still left with?

So, let’s play it again:

“You guys are supposed to [ … ] help us.”

Consider who are “you” and who are “us”

“You” are, most immediately, the security at the Downing Street gates. In Mitchell’s mind they are there mainly to open the main gates to let him pass through: that is the beginning and end of this little demonstration of why we’re “not all in this together”.

The police officers see their role a trifle differently, indeed from a more elevated level. They are there to keep the peace, to maintain security, and to protect the entire citizenry, who may include elected politicians.

Beyond the immediate police detachment, Mitchell may be claiming ownership and the dedicated aid and assistance of the entire Metropolitan Police, and by further extension of the police service nationally. At which, Malcolm mutters, “Up to a point, Lord Copper.“

We have been here before

Just how far political (i.e. Thatcherite) intervention went in the aftermath of the Hillsborough tragedy may be just about arguable. We do know that Thatcher herself was closeted with South Yorkshire police chief a day or so before 164 police statements were re-written to fit the “official” script.

And now:

A Nottinghamshire MP is to call for an inquiry into alleged manipulation of evidence by South Yorkshire Police during the miners’ strike.

John Mann, Labour MP for Bassetlaw, said claims made in a BBC Inside Out programme relating to the so-called Battle of Orgreave must be examined.

The claims, that junior officers were told what to write in their statements, were “very convincing”, said Mr Mann.

South Yorkshire Police said it would consider whether a review was needed.

What we know is that the cases against arrested miners were built on false evidence, as after Hillsborough:

… a barrister specialising in criminal trials, Mark George QC, analysed 40 police officers’ Orgreave statements, and found that many contained identical descriptions of alleged disorder by the miners. To prove the offence of riot, the prosecution has to establish a scene of general disorder within which a defendant committed a particular act, for example throwing a stone, which would otherwise carry a much lesser charge.

George found that 34 officers’ statements, supposed to have been compiled separately, used the identical phrase: “Periodically there was missile throwing from the back of the pickets.”

One paragraph, of four full sentences, was identical word for word in 22 separate statements. It described an alleged charge by miners, including the phrase: “There was however a continual barrage of missiles.”

Michael Mansfield QC, who defended three of the acquitted miners, described South Yorkshire police’s evidence then as “the biggest frame-up ever”.

One case, against Bryan Moreland, spectacularly collapsed when a Home Office graphologist went on oath to declare the police officer’s signature was a fabrication. Moreover:

[Chief Constable] Wright did not accept any fault at all in the Orgreave operation and prosecutions. But he acknowledged unapologetically that there was a deliberate effort to convict miners of riot and unlawful assembly, which carried potentially long, even life, prison sentences. In a report to the police committee dated 25 September 1985, Wright set out the details of the operation to deal, he said, with escalating violence in picketing at the Orgreave coking plant, which miners have always argued was exaggerated.

“The chief constable decided that the usual charge of disorderly conduct, contrary to the Public Order Act, was inadequate and that, where appropriate, charges of unlawful assembly and riot should be preferred,” Wright wrote in his report.

We’ll be back to continue that in a moment. So far, the bottom line seems to be: in Thatcher’s day, the police — at least those of the South Yorkshire force — were  supposed to [ … ] help us. We have that on the authority of the Baroness herself:

There are those who are using violence and intimidation to impose their will on others who do not want it. They are failing because of two things.

First, because of the magnificent police force well trained for carrying out their duties bravely and impartially (loud cheers).

And secondly, because the overwhelming majority of people in this country are honourable, decent and law abiding and want the law to be upheld and will not be intimidated, and I pay tribute to the courage of those who have gone into work through these picket lines, to the courage of those at Ravenscraig and Scunthorpe for not going to be intimidated out of their jobs and out of their future. Ladies and Gentlemen we need the support of everyone in this battle which goes to the very heart of our society. The rule of law must prevail over the rule of the mob.

Which should all be read with implicit and emphatic first-person pronouns: My impartiality. My police. My intimidation. My law. My rules. To get her cheering audience, Thatcher had to make that speech at Banbury Cattle Market, in one of the safest Tory seats in the country.

Any blame for all this politicising of the police goes right (far right) to the top. The poor bloody constabulary were told, even ordered to submit their notebooks for editing by Chekisty and commissars. That is no obscene exaggeration: it was the way things were done in South Yorkshire under Chief Constable Wright (and so we continue from that earlier quotation):

He set up a dedicated unit to target the miners: “A chief superintendent well experienced in CID work was appointed and directed by the chief constable to organise the collection and collation of evidence, and the preparation of prosecution files whenever the scale and nature of events at Orgreave so required.”

On 18 June 1984, the day of the most notorious confrontation, when police were filmed attacking miners then claimed they were attacked first, Wright recorded: “The evidence-gathering team comprised one detective inspector, one detective sergeant, and four detective constables.” It has never been revealed who these officers or the more senior commanding officers were, nor if any were then involved in what has been labelled the black propaganda unit which conducted the campaign to falsely blame the Liverpool supporters for the Hillsborough disaster.

For the record, at that time young Andrew Mitchell was girding his loins and polishing his bicycle clips to become a devoutly Thatcherite Tory MP for the Gedling constituency of Greater Nottingham, not a million miles from the core territory of the strike-breakers.

And now for “us”

If  ’You guys are supposed to [ … ] help us’, let us consider the precise definition of us in this context.

At first sight it might be the us of the government. Yet that doesn’t quite comprehend Mitchell’s position. After all, the Chief Whip  is the one senior occupant of Downing Street who is there primarily as the Gauleiter of the majority parliamentary party. Cue wikipedia:

In British politics, the Chief Whip of the governing party in the House of Commons is usually appointed as Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury so that the incumbent, who represents the whips in general, has a seat and a voice in the Cabinet. By virtue of holding the office of Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury, the Government Chief Whip has an official residence at 12 Downing Street. However, the Chief Whip’s office is currently located at 9 Downing Street.

To be clear, we do not have a ‘governing party’ in this parliament. We are saddled with a coalition. There are two Deputy Chief Whips, of whom one is Alistair Carmichael of the LibDems, who does not have bicycling access to Downing Street. When the Chief Whip speaks in the Commons (and, by tradition, such occasions are few and far between), it is specifically in a party-political context.

So Chief Whip Mitchell (as was) was a Conservative Party official demanding obedience from his subservient lesser-beings. Whether the term he used was “plebs” or “plods”, he was claiming l’état, c’est moi.

That is far, far more damaging than any fucking adverb.

Just Kidding

Today the Lady in Malcolm’s Life and the Pert Young Piece headed off to risk their credit cards against London’s mercantile finest. This is what gets called “retail therapy”.

Malcolm was left, bereft, solitary, and told to have a meal ready by seven p.m.

What’s to do?

Well, down to Highbury and Islington, catch the “Overground” to Wapping, and investigate a couple of boozers in Ratcliff(e) Highway. Wapping station, incidentally, is one of the most likely locations of Execution Dock, where we shall look in shortly

Malcolm’s emotional tie here is his Dear Old Dad, who was a Thames Division copper only a year or two before the picture below. That’s the River Thames police, the oldest official police force in the world. Therefore Wapping Police Station is also the oldest in the world. It’s also another possible site for Execution Dock.

In these degenerate days, it’s merely the Marine Support Unit.

Shiver me timbers, matey!

A couple of doors short of Wapping police station is the Captain Kidd.

Now, don’t get carried away here. Curb your romantic propensities. It’s a bit of contrivance. Despite its venerable appearance — and it was carved out of another of those warehouses and counting houses, the pub dates back all of a couple of decades.

It’s hardly prepossessing from the street: you even have to look for the hanging sign to locate it. You enter by an alley-way, and all is revealed. Which is worth waiting for.

For once the pub interior decorators worked with what they’ve got. The result is more than passable. Banquettes around the wall under non-memorabililia of the eponymous Kidd fore-and-aft. Other tables in the space of the room. A peninsular bar. Those fine windows and the magnificent view of the Upper Pool of London. Slip out the side doors, to the terrace, and it’s even better. It’s a Sam Smith’s house, so Old Brewery Bitter at well-below-London prices. There’s the standard pub menu, too (and, it is rumoured, a restaurant upstairs). All plus points.

The really instructive point is the mixed clientèle. Wapping hasn’t forsaken its working-class roots. The river side of the Highway has the seven-figure apartments with full river views. A bit back are the Peabody Buildings and and the local-authority flats. Both sides of the community seem comfortable here.

A very political pirate

The story of William Kidd is well known: the son of the Greenock manse who went abroad to make his fortune, served King (Billy, since you ask) and country

• and Governor Codrington against the French in the Caribbean
• and Richard Coote — the earl of Bellomont and newly designated governor of New York and the Massachusetts Bay — against the Dutch in the New York colony.

He had already made some powerful political friends (and, the obverse of that coin, similarly enemies) when he  fell in with another conniving Scot, Robert Livingstone, who owned lands and businesses in New York. Livingstone and Kidd and Coote cooked up a scheme, to get London merchant interests to finance a scheme to clean up the piracy of the Indian Ocean, and turn a pretty profit. So Livingstone, Kidd and Coote had their their names on the prospectus, but behind them covertly were the Whig grandees: the earls of Shrewsbury, Orford, and Romney and John Lord Somers.

In April 1696 Kidd left London, kitted out with the potent Adventure Galley. He sailed first to New York, where he recruited some ninety hardened pirates, and then set sail for Madagascar, which was HQ for Indian Ocean pirates. Rather than take on the pirates, Kidd then went north and raided the pilgrims in the Red Sea. he found the pilgrim convoy protected by an Indiaman, and so his scheme was flushed out into the open. Kidd then took his Adventure Galley to prey along the Indian coast. Those pirates in Kidd’s crew were less than satisfied with the results, so far, of their efforts; and Kidd seems to have been threatened with mutiny. Somehow he laid out and killed a gunner, William Moore, with a metal-banded barrel. This would have consequences.

Back in Madagascar Kidd was in full league with the local pirates. He had a bit of luck taking half a dozen ships — though only two were French, and so covered by his privateering licence. By now the East India Company, under pressure from the Mughals, wanted Kidd’s head. Influence was peddled back in London, and Kidd was an outlaw. Coote, in New York, was told to lay hands on Kidd when he showed up.

Nemesis

Kidd retraced his outward voyage, first via the Caribbean, where he discovered he was on the Most Wanted list, then along the east coast of the Americas, down-sizing his crew and depositing his considerable winnings (just where is one of the great treasure-hunting myths and legends). He retained just enough to tempt Coote into a deal. Coote knew which side his bread was buttered: he arrested Kidd, and sent him (and some remaining loot) to London. The rest of Kidd’s wealth (about £6,000) was requisitioned by Coote as “expenses”, and went to buy land in Greenwich Village.

In London Kidd was approached by the Tories, now firmly in power, to peach on his former Whig backers. He refused (presumably because he wasn’t prepared to annoy anyone at this stage). The Whig lords, who stood too close for comfort to charges of treason, quietly let Kidd go to trial. Kidd was found guilty of piracy, and the murder of William Moore. About all that was remarkable about this stitch-up of a trial is that Kidd’s privateering documents had gone missing, and were turned up only in the last century. Those documents wouldn’t have saved Kidd, but their absence goes to show that someone in authority had his card marked.

At Execution Dock on 23 May 1701 Kidd was swung from the gallows. The rope broke. Its replacement worked a treat.

Trigger hacked-off: help from on high at hand?

“Trigger” Mulcaire may have scored Wimbledon’s first, ever, but more recently it’s been all own goals.

Let us then celebrate that the Supreme Court (it had to go that far!) has told him to cough on who was his News International puppet master.

Mulcaire received as much as £850,000 from the News of the Screws for his dutiful services, hacking upwards of 5,795 people (as of the November 2011 count). We may safely assume it wasn’t out of petty cash. The obvious name in the frame is Greg Miskiw, the News of the Screws Assistant Editor, That’s assistant to Andy Coulson. Now — conveniently  — Miskiw is a resident of Palm Beach, Florida.

A further reasonably assumption is this went all the way to the top, even beyond Miskiw, particularly because Max Clifford waived his claim for compensation after he met with Rebekah Brooks (but before Mulcaire’s conviction) and agreed a fee of a cool million for Clifford’s slimy future services.

The Orange card

Miskiw may have a 28-pounder shell, primed and ready, in his ammunition locker, because nobody, but nobody will be too keen on developing the Northern Irish dimension. Once again we are back to Stakeknife.

Miskiw was buddies with Alex Marunchuk, once the Screws crime reporter, then Irish editor. Marunchuk was a partner with Jonathan Rees in Pure Energy. Miskiw and Rees were partners in Abbeycover, which itself was an adjust of Southern Investigations, which takes us to ex-copper and child-pornographer Sid Fillery. The Rees-Marunchuk link takes us into trojan emails and computer hacking (and so to the police Operation Tuleta). Then there’s Operation Kalmyk, which is focused on Rees hacking Ian Hurst (a.k.a. Martin Ingram) — which is the Stakeknife connection.

As Malcolm was noting a year back, by that stage we are into the viscera of the beast, the notorious Force Research Unit, at Thiepval Barracks, in Lisburn.

_________________________________________

No, no, a thousand times no. This is not paranoia.

The Smithwick Tribunal in Dublin is looking at the IRA murders of Chief Sup Harry Breen and Super Bob Buchanan of the RUC at Jonesborough in the South Armagh/County Louth border country, apparently returning from a covert meeting with the Irish security service in Dundalk. Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP MP, has alleged that the IRA were tipped off by Garda DS Owen Corrigan. Corrigan’s IRA “handler” is alleged to be the (equally alleged) double-agent Freddie “Stakeknife” Scappaticci. Scappaticci, along with the late John Joe Magee of Dundalk are (even more alleged) to have been the key members of the IRA “nutting squad”. One further “alleged” is that Scappaticci was second only to the OC IRA Northern Command, a certain Máirtín Mag Aonghusa, MP, MLA.

Ian Hurst, after extensive going-and-froing was induced to give evidence to Smithwick: that was redacted for public consumption. The RTÉ reports, especially that of 26th April, should be required reading.

And you thought it was all about Milly Dowler’s phone?

Absolutely no coincidence? Absolutely!

Dodgy Dave Cameron, he of the borrowed Met Police horse and the over-close embrace of News International, flits off for a bonding session with Obama.

Conveniently,

Six people have been arrested by detectives investigating phone-hacking allegations against journalists, Scotland Yard has said.

The arrests took place at addresses in London, Oxfordshire, Hampshire and Hertfordshire.

Police said one woman and five men were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

Officers from the Operation Weeting phone-hacking inquiry are searching addresses connected to the arrests.

Those arrested were a 49-year-old man and 43-year-old woman, both from Oxfordshire, a 39-year-old man from Hampshire, a 46-year-old man from west London, a 38-year-old man from Hertfordshire, and a 48-year-old man from east London.

That neatly identifies Charlie and Rebekah Brooks. And definitely ruins Charlie’s trip to Cheltenham.

Gordon Brown “hacked” — quelle surprise!

It’s a Bank Holiday edition. No celeb deaths. No tsunami. So the front-pages have been “in salt” for some time.

So to the Independent’s big splash (but no tsunami):

Gordon Brown’s Downing Street emails ‘hacked’

 Computer crime by press may be as widespread as phone scandal

Despite the “Exclusive” tag, this is as surprising as stale Christmas cake. The “evidence” is cited as:

• Mr Brown’s private communications, along with emails belonging to a former Labour adviser and lobbyist, Derek Draper, have been identified by Scotland Yard’s Operation Tuleta team as potentially hacked material.

Well, actually chaps, that doesn’t come as a shock.

The simple fact that any dirt on Draper oozed out in the pollution propagated by Paul Staines, a.k.a. “Guido Fawkes” should tell us it came by devious means. Total masochists should pursue the thread by reviewing Staines’ own “Derek Draper” tag. What we didn’t know then, but fully appreciate now, is that Fawkes is an orifice through which Tory HQ and the bits that even Murdoch couldn’t excrete were deposited in public view.

• Mr Brown has previously accused News International of accessing parts of his private life including his bank accounts. He said he “could not understand” why he had the protection and defences of a chancellor or prime minister, and yet remained vulnerable to “unlawful or unscrupulous tactics”.

Well, that’s news as recent as last July. The Guardian was far more explicit then, and tied in:

• Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who specialised in phone hacking for the News of the World,
• the Sunday Times who “blagged” the Abbey Nat on six occasions and Brown’s lawyers, Allen & Overy at least once.

The Guardian noted:

Brown joins a long list of Labour politicians who are known to have been targeted by private investigators working for News International, including the former prime minister Tony Blair and his media adviser Alastair Campbell, the former deputy prime minister John Prescott and his political adviser Joan Hammell, Peter Mandelson as trade secretary, Jack Straw and David Blunkett as home secretaries, Tessa Jowell as media secretary and her special adviser Bill Bush, and Chris Bryant as minister for Europe.

The sheer scale of the data assault on Brown is unusual, with evidence of “attempts” to obtain his legal, financial, tax, and police records as well as to listen to his voicemail. All of these incidents are linked to media organisations. In many cases, there is evidence of a link to News International.

And, of course, there is no greater defender of News International’s “freedom of the press” than Staines/Fawkes — there’s another tag for that one.

A bit further back Damian Green, then Opposition Tory immigration spokesman was arrested because a Christopher Galley had been filching Home Office papers and passing them to Green. That was in breach of Galley’s Official Secrets Act signature. One account has it that Green was leading Galley along by promising promotion in Tory circles. Again, by no coincidence, Galley went on to be “employed” by … you guessed it! … Staines/Fawkes!

Where the Independent story is correct is linking to the very serious cyber-attack on Peter Hain at the Northern Ireland Office. Again, that is no “new” news. Shaun Woodward, Hain’s successor at the NIO, was asking the questions last autumn:

… if the Metropolitan police’s investigation – as part of Operation Tuleta – proves conclusive, the consequences could be very grave. Since its inception in the 70s, the secretary of state for Northern Ireland has been privy to some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets, so this touches on all aspects of national security. Was it an attempt to breach secure email accounts of the Northern Ireland Office? Did private detectives read confidential communications between the secretary of state and the prime minister? Was a Trojan computer virus used to try to gain access to other third parties with whom the secretary of state was in email contact? What of foreign governments, if the attack was on Peter’s secure account? …

So we need urgent answers to these fresh hacking questions. Was Peter Hain’s computer hacked? Was mine as his successor? What information, deliberately or otherwise, may have been passed to those engaged in Irish-related terrorism today? If proved, any such criminal actions would put at risk not only the politics of Northern Ireland but the peace process itself.

The Leveson inquiry must now look into this issue. If true, it represents a new dimension to the irresponsibility of those in the media who have systematically put themselves above the law.

Ah, Malcolm hears you say, but Hain’s private life was a legitimate subject of enquiry. Except that wasn’t the point of the hacking. It also involved targeting PSNI Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde. Any comic relief was that:

DUP MP Ian Paisley Jnr has claimed his mobile phone was hacked when he was a junior minister in Belfast.

For those who missed it on its first outing, Malcolm addressed the murky links between News International and ex-employee hackers of the notorious Force Research Unit, at Thiepval Barracks, in Lisburn, in previous well-visited posts.

The turning worm

Here’s a typically-shrewd summary of the latest YouGov by Anthony Wells:

There were also a series on questions specifically on the riots. While 91% of people thought it was right that Cameron & Boris Johnson had returned from their holidays, they were generally seen as having handled the riots badly so far. Only 28% thought Cameron & May had handled them well, 24% thought Boris had handled it well (though of course, much of the fieldwork was done prior to Cameron & Johnson having done anything but get on a plane!). People were on balance positive about how the police had handled the riots- 52% thought they had handled them well, but a large minority (43%) thought they’d done badly.

Those are, in UK political terms, pretty damning judgements on Cameron, May and Johnson.

Similarly, for the Guardian’s CiF, “Sir” Michael White is marking the report cards. It cannot be happy, happy talk for the sorely afflicted. For example:

The home secretary was the first key cabinet player to dash home from her holiday as soon as Saturday night’s Tottenham rioting spread. She said most of the tough law and order things expected of Conservative voters, but lacks the weight and profile. Some colleagues felt May looked a little frightened on TV. She went out on the street with Boris Johnson in Clapham Junction, but edged away as the mayor stumbled.

Ouch! Even double ouch!

Note the “some colleagues”. Who he?

As Malcolm had confidently expected, David Davis is out there in the long grass, zeroing his gun-sights. Sure enough, after the statutory throat-clearing that it’s all Labour’s fault, Davis waded in with a demand for “real and drastic changes in the leadership of Britain’s police forces.“

That decodes as Davis asserting that he would have been more interventionist than May and Cameron. Remember: Davis was the front-runner for the Tory leadership until outflanked by Cameron’s smarm, he was the Home Affairs spokesman until his kamikazi resignation on the issue of liberties. He still retains a lot of support on the Tory right-wing. When he asserts that things have “gone wrong”, that “Gang culture has too strong a grip in too many cities today and its symptoms are clear to see”, he is indisputably correct. His squib may ostensibly be chucked at the police leadership, but his high-explosive is lobbed at the ConDem hierarchy:

• Who is responsible for the police service of England and Wales? — Theresa May.
• Who has mislaid a fair proportion of the top brass of Scotland Yard? Who has run through a Commissioner a year? — Boris Johnson.
• Who has been ineffectually waffling on about the “broken society”? David Cameron.

That FT interview

Any moment now some kind soul will be digging out the interview Cameron gave the FT just before the Election. It contained Cameron’s summary of what he wanted as his priorites, as his “radical manifesto”. As an aide-memoire, Malcolm recalls this key extract:

We are saying that you’ve had for years now the big government approach, the big state approach, and it hasn’t worked. It has left us with an enormous deficit, with deep social problems, with really big problems in our politics and we need to go in a totally different direction. And that is not big state action but big social action, using the state to remake society and giving people power and control over their lives, whether it’s establishing new schools, whether it’s generating your own electricity, … whether it is making sure charities, social enterprises in the private sector are involved in all manner of public services, including welfare provision. This is a very big break with the past; it’s a very big change. It is all – and it goes absolutely back to what I said in the leadership election four and a half years ago – there is such a thing as society but that’s not the same thing as the state.

Well, ordering 16,000 police onto the streets of London looks pretty “Big State” to most people. Those looters were certainly taking to heart the idea of “big social action” and “power and control over their lives”.

The rhetoric, too, is changing. No more the emphasis on “charities, social enterprises in the private sector [being] involved in all manner of public services, including welfare provision.” Suddenly it’s all back on local authorities to sort out, with a modicum of state finance.

An Independent view

Cameron is a slippery customer at any time. He needs to be particularly so now. One can sense the essential reason for Labour to be supportive is that they know the real damage will be done by Cameron’s own “support”. It’s the old mantra about those parallel Commons benches: “Your political opponents are in front of you: your enemies are behind you”.

The main article (by Oliver Wright, Whitehall Editor and Cahal Milmo, Chief Reporter) for the Indy has the essence:

Boris Johnson calls for U-turn on police numbers, while No 10 ridiculed over plans to use water cannon

David Cameron appeared increasingly isolated last night after senior police officers, MPs and even the Conservative Mayor of London united in a call for him to reconsider police cuts in the face of four days of sustained rioting.

 In an attempt to regain the political initiative the Prime Minister had declared that a police “fightback” was under way, and that water cannon were being made available at 24 hours’ notice. But senior police chiefs said these would be ineffectual and the real question was not whether they could cope with the current disturbances, but whether they would be able to deal with similar civil disturbances in future with thousands fewer officers.

Put not your faith in water cannon

Two of them were on loan to Dublin, in case of trouble over the stop-over by HM Queen Mrs Windsor. Have they been returned? Rumour has it that at least one more is unserviceable.

They are crude, slow, and repeatedly need to be replenished. As the Ardoyne made clear: slash a tyre, and your water-cannon is immobilized.

Not a good resource in most British streets. And that same Indy article put the dampers on the idea:

… there was confusion about the details of the 24-hour contingency plan to provide water cannon outlined by Mr Cameron. One police officer suggested that the proposal was simply “spin” and said that none of the police chiefs involved were likely to ask for them.

Acpo confirmed that the proposals involved the use of up to six water cannon belonging to the Police Service of Northern Ireland. An Acpo spokesman said: “If the vehicles were required then they would come from the PSNI. At present, it is not felt that they would be effective in tackling the current disturbances.” The Ulster force emphasised it was unable to provide the trained operators required to man the vehicles.

Instead it’s all a matter of pulling the wagons into a circle:

Acpo said Avon and Somerset, Gloucestershire, Greater Manchester Police, Nottinghamshire and West Midlands forces had asked for and would receive officers, dogs, horses and other equipment from 42 forces in England and Wales, eight from Scotland as well as vehicles – not including water cannon – from Northern Ireland.

 That’s an awful lot of political debts to be repaid with interest. Guess who is already ahead of the curve?  —

THE riots seen in England over recent days are less likely to happen north of the Border, Alex Salmond claimed yesterday, as he argued that the chaos should not be described as a “UK crisis”…

But his claims that there was less likelihood of violence kicking off in Scotland, and his criticism of TV and newspaper reports that described them as “UK riots”, were condemned by political opponents who accused Mr Salmond of trying to making political capital out of the chaos.

London by night …

It’s a fine album by Julie London, all the way back in 1958.

Curiously, it doesn’t include the eponymous song. But we’ll have the smokey Miss London here for the glam, and also because she could put out a good jazz vocal

The definitive version is, inevitably, by Frank. He’d previously recorded it for Capitol in 1950, with an arrangement by Axel Stordahl. Then, also in 1958, he and Billy May put it on the Come Fly With Me album:

London by night is a wonderful sight,
There is magic abroad in the air.
I’m often told that the streets turn into gold
When the moon shines on Circus and Square.

Deep in the dark that envelops the Park
There’s romance in each cigarette glow.
Down by the Thames, lights that sparkle like gems
Seem to wink at each girl and her beau.

Up comes the moon when the City’s asleep —
He’s not alone, for it seems
Somewhere up there stands an angel to keep her watch,
While each Londoner dreams.

My love and I saw the sun leave the sky,
Then we kissed in the fast-fading light.
Most people say they love London by day
But lovers love London by night.

The lyric is by Carroll Coates, who is (as far as Malcolm knows) still happily with us.

That’s all a world away from the grim realities of the last few nights.

Something happened

Fear is a strange thing. It can come in a sudden wave, usually as an after-effect of shock. That was the consequence of 7/7. You’ll still notice a certain wariness among London commuters on the Picadilly Line between King’s Cross and Russell Square, or on a number 30 bus in Tavistock Square.

Other times it just grow’d, like Topsy. That was the experience of yesterday, Tuesday 9th August, 2011.

By mid-day shop windows were being boarded. Already police patrols were being more obtrusive, and deliberately so. By mid afternoon the underground and bus services were unwontedly slackening off. The rush hour somehow didn’t quite happen.

The Pert Young Piece was despatched home from her south London office early. She was not unique. She had a theatre ticket for a performance that evening. She went (to no small edginess on her mother’s part).

In London, then, it was a very quiet evening — though Malcolm reckons that the BBC and Sky news feeds were heavily followed. It was not thus in the provinces: they had it rough. Riots in Gloucester?

The silly season

These last few days may well have been a decisive turning point in English politics.

Away daze

Blasted Boris, London’s comic cuts Mayor, has lived a charmed life, trading on his laddish, caddish image. He had to do a swift return from western Canada. His predictable “stunt” was to head down to Croydon — an outer London borough with the more sensational doings of the previous night. Then on to Wandsworth, the archetypal Tory London, where they think it’s a cute idea to charge kids to use the public parks.

The sub-text of that is the Tories took the Mayorality in 2008 on the votes of Outer London and the leafier suburbs.

And Boris was booed and mocked.

Theresa May has had a remarkably good ride as the ConDem Home Secretary. She has been, above all, the “safe pair of hands” which is the prerequisite for this most slippery of government hot potatoes. There is always a curiosity over “what happens if the PM falls under the bus” — it has been most instructive that May’s name has been mentioned as a possible successor. She, too, was out-of-the-country, and out-of-touch.

After Saturday’s disturbances, when events were largely based in Tottenham, it took the Home Office until midday on Sunday to put a taling head on TV. Sadly, the “duty minister” was Lynne Featherstone, fifth in the departmental pecking order. The best that can be said of her is that, as a LibDem ministerial appointment, she makes Nick Clegg look almost capable.

Theresa May was “not available” until yesterday, when she made a less than expert fumble at supporting the police. Since the Met Police are currently in a bit of a tizz, thanks to the walk-out by Commissioner Stephenson over the Murdoch payola etc, one might have expected the smack of firm government to be coming from elsewhere. Evidently it didn’t; and the lack of effort was well noticed. Theresa May is now tarnished goods. Once the temporary inter-party truce (and, with David Davis stalking the long grass, the intra-party truce) expires, she is in for a kicking. As they say, “there are questions to be answered”.

The juiciest moment was May being Boris Johnson’s support. As Tom Watson MP, as astute as ever, noted: after ninety seconds of Johnson on video, May was out-of-there.

The Big Cheese

Which brings us to the door of 10 Downing Street, and David Cameron’s overdue return from Tuscan socklessness (as right).

By general agreement Cameron does good talk; but is lackadaisical about the underpinings — the precise obverse of his immediate predecessor in the job. Peter Hoskins’s place-holder piece for the Spectator blog-site was highly instructive (and here is its entirety):

So far as its tone went, David Cameron’s statement just now was firm and unyielding. He did express his sympathy for the victims of the riots; the emergency services, the shopkeepers, the fearful. But the major emphasis was on bringing the culprits to book. His “clear message” for the perpetrators of this destruction was that “you will feel the full force of the law”. He preceded that by describing their actions as “criminality, pure and simple — and it has to be confronted and defeated”. There were no excuses nor prevarications, and rightly so.

As for the content, it seems that the government is eager to keep this a police matter, but to ramp it up nonetheless. “We need more,” said Cameron, which included “more police on the streets” and “more arrests”. He explained that there will be 16,000 officers parading London tonight, rather than the 6,000 there were yesterday. And he also confirmed that Parliament will be recalled, for one day, on Thursday. “We can stand together in condemnation of these crimes, we can stand together in determination to fix these communities,” he finished, before marching back into No.10.

Hardly a Churchillian effort, then. It has the sniff of the second Act of King Lear:

I will have such revenges on you both,
That all the world shall — I will do such things, —
What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be
The terrors of the earth.

The emperor is not yet unclothed, but the missing socks are a start.

Back to Miss London

Née “Gayle Peck”. See: it’s how you tell ‘em. It also helps to make it in Hollywood by running an elevator.

She did some good stuff.

Above all, she made two useful marriages: first to Jack Webb (not just Dragnet, but also as a prototype for numerous media/crime fiction crossovers) and then (for Malcolm, the legendary) Bobby Troup —alongside whom she is buried.

And looked good — as right (especially to a wannabe, hormonal teen in the late ’50s).

That London by Night album was not her best.

Still, the dozen tracks had some pointers for our current thoughts:  Something I Dreamed Last Night (#7) was The Exciting Life (#10) for some. They were probably asserting Just the Way I Am (#5). Well, Sir (1), this Cloudy Morning (#12) , That’s not for Me (#2).

OK: try this:

Two flak-catchers and questions

Anyone who had lingering warm notions of Boris Johnson’s London mayorality would have them forcibly squelched today.

Mr Bumble of West London

Advance Richard Barnes, AM, third Deputy Mayor of London — Boris’s under-strapper’s under-strapper’s under-strapper — put up to answer questions about the Tottenham pogrom (see below). Just the person who gets left behind when everyone else, with any competence, is away from the action. He was, in a phrase, piss-poor weak. He bumbled. He stumbled:

• It was everybody else’s fault.
• The Police Complaints Commission had responsibilility (and Barnes, Boris and the London Authority have no responsibilities there, so O.K.) but the Met Police, no siree (and Barnes, Boris and the London Authority are can-carriers there).
• There was no precedent for such events— this we must assume, is a coded reference to the  different skin complexion of those involved in what happened, earlier this year, in Westminster and Oxford Street. A Mr Barnes responded, when prompted, “that was totally different”.
• There was no “intelligence” (how true, how very true).
• Rehousing the burned- and bombed-out? That’s the local Council, nothin’ to do with me, guv.
• Oh, and by the way, there’s “twitter” about a repeat performance this Sunday night. One can rest assured his advisers in Scotland Yard were glad to have that one out in the open.

So: the unanswered question #1: Where is said Boris?

Even by telephone or video-link from his Turkish beach, the travertine marble loggia of his Tuscan hide-away — or wherever — a comment would have almost been reassuring.

Be of good cheer, said the angel, for things could be worse.

And, lo! They did get worse.

There are no fewer than six ministers, including the usually-all-purpose Theresa May, at the Home Office:

• Angela Browning (number three) is minister of state for crime prevention and antisocial behaviour reduction — so might reasonably to thought to have a corner in this one. No: not her.
• Nick Herbert (number four) is minister of state for policing and criminal justice, so — most definitely — could be involved here. Not him, either.

Guess who’s name is in the frame, then?

Ms Featherhead of Highgate Village

Yes, indeed: Lynne Featherstone (number five), parliamentary under secretary of state for equalities and criminal information. The walking, mouthing proof that even in this lowest form of ministerial life there is dearth of any talent, except as bag-carrier to her betters.

There is a small unanswered question here, too: since Ms Featherstone was so assertive that she had been in contact with the fountainhead, Theresa May, why was the boss not available to take the interview? Both Barnes and Featherstone were obvious fill-gaps.

After all those years, and a “career” based on delivering lines prepared by others on the awfulness and inadequacies of Haringey Council, it must have hurt, hurt, hurt to have to acknowledge the existence and competence of Claire Kober as Leader of Haringey Council.

Community?

The word of the day:

Tottenham MP David Lammy said: “A community that was already hurting has had its heart ripped out.”

Nice one, Dave! Good to hear that you are so proud to have “lived in Tottenham all my life”. A poetic truth, at best: that would be omitting the boarding school at Peterborough, and the stint at Harvard Law. And, of course, the recent removal to more suitably bourgeois quarters. But still, it’s the thought that counts.

So, which “community”?

The usual mental connection for Tottenham is with the British-Caribbean community. And that, for sure, is the root of the present aggravation. The cause célèbre is, we are told, the shooting dead of:

Mark Duggan, 29, [who] was in a car being followed by police during a covert operation on Thursday.

But Duggan, a known offender from London’s notorious Broadwater Farm Estate, became aware that he was being followed and opened fire on the officers.

He shot the officer from Scotland Yard’s elite firearms squad CO19 in the side of his chest with a handgun.

One witness said the victim was an ‘elder’ from the Broadwater Farm Estate, a short distance away. The phrase is used to describe people who are well known and respected by residents.

But Tottenham, and Broadwater Farm, is not longer the “community” it once was.

There have been several subsequent waves of new arrivals, most recently Somalis and others. The British-Caribbean “community” is certainly not any longer the dominant one. Which may be the root “cause” of many simmering resentments. Moreover, where one the “Yardies” held sway, there is now considerable competition for the turf the wrong side of the law.

So: the unanswered question #2: Whose community?

Malcolm will be looking carefully to see whose shops, whose homes, and the ethnic origins of their owners, which were torched and looted last night. He does not expect to be greatly surprised.

____________________________________________________

Anyone lost by the title of this piece should refer to Tom Wolfe:

“Now I’m here to try to answer any questions I can,” he says, “but you have to understand that I’m only speaking as an individual, and so naturally none of my comments are binding, but I’ll answer any questions I can, and if I can’t answer them, I’ll do what I can to get the answers for you.”

And then it dawns on you, and you wonder why it took so long for you to realize it. This man is the flak catcher. His job is to catch the flak for the No. 1 man. He’s like the professional mourners you can hire in Chinatown. They have certified wailers, professional mourners, in Chinatown, and when your loved one dies, you can hire the professional mourners to wail at the funeral and show what a great loss to the community the departed is. In the same way this lifer is ready to catch whatever flak you’re sending up. It doesn’t matter what bureau they put him in. It’s all the same. Poverty, Japanese imports, valley fever, tomato-crop parity, partial disability, home loans, second-probate accounting, the Interstate 90 detour change order, lockouts, secondary boycotts,, G.I. alimony, the Pakistani quota, cinch mites, the Tularemic Loa loa, veterans’ dental benefits, workmen’s compensation, suspended excise rebates–whatever you’re angry about, it doesn’t matter he’s there to catch the flak. He’s a lifer.