When I was in college, there were certain words you couldn’t say in front of a girl. Now you can say them, but you can’t say ‘girl’.
There’s much that ‘cannot be said’. And the Independent Office for Police Conduct, on the dubious relationship of ‘the Right Honourable’ [sic] Boris Johnson and Ms Arcuri, his pole-dancing tech-instructress, said it all:
The first of those should hardly be a surprise, except it involves two low-lying coasts, and the meteorology of the sandbanks in the way. Anyway, I’ve seen the Mournes from the Dublin Mountains, and vice-versa, and that a far greater distance. Any time I travel the East Coast Main Line, I try to re-capture a moment when — I swear it! — I glimpsed the unmistakeable lantern of Ely Cathedral from the train.
The second of those should make one gasp only because it is a measure of irredeemable stupidity.
The third, though, remains quite extra-ordinary.
It deserves remark, first, for the circumstances. The Prime Minister emerged from the door of Downing Street, past a notice warning (from past and painful experience) of the waiting snappers hoping to see embarrassing documents. In other words, a prime example of Boris Johnson’s lack of concern for rules, for security, for (a favoured term of this moment’ ‘common-sense.
As a result, The [London] Times and other sources, had clear view of the memo:
Meeting with Sir Graham Brady — Wednesday 13th May 2020.
Following an exchange between you and Graham, he has asked for a catch up. This is the first since December. It is important that at least the chief [whip] stays in the room — he will, as he has previously, seek to ensure that it is just the two of you.
Whilst he will seek more regular meetings (let me handle this and don’t agree to anything), he will almost certainly raise the Covid response and the lockdown.
etc., etc. Concluding:
Enjoy. BG. 12/05/20
The initials decode as Ben Gascoigne, whom The Times annotates as:
Mr Gascoigne, the presumed author of the memo, is a long-standing adviser to Mr Johnson, having worked for him when he was foreign secretary and before that as his private secretary when he was mayor of London.
In other words, one fully acquainted with Johnson’s cavalier attitudes.
But what does this say about the trust that ought to exist between the close associates in Downing Street?
Is the implication that, left to his own devices, Johnson is a loose cannon?
Or, is it a suggestion that Graham Brady, knight of the shires, cannot be relied on to play it straight, can be ‘over-persuasive’, even intimidating?
Beyond that, lies a deeper unease:
There seems to be a growing unease, even a disconnect between the ‘business’ Tories who are prepared to accept a higher attrition from Covid-19, that there may be a quicker return to ‘normal’ trading conditions, versus more cautious, more thinking types who fully recognise an upsurge in Covid cases would be not just socially, but also politically destructive.
And that’s a split not going away.
If only because the Johnson administration is the Vote.Leave Old Boys’ Team. Of which Brady was a main cheer-leader. and Johnson chief choir-boy.
The precise marital status between Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, Marina Claire Wheeler QC, and Carrie Symonds is less than certain. What is certainly not clear is whether one can be properly and decently ‘affianced’ while still married elsewhere.
Moreover, that fiancée usage can be dated precisely to 1853 (says the OED), and that jocularly. It wasn’t properly domesticated until three decades later.
So I’ll try to help the BBC:
arm-candy, bag, bawd, bed-mate, bed-warmer, bint, bird, bit-of-fluff, bit-on-the-side, bitch, blowen, chippy, concubine, consort, courtesan, date, donna, doxy, dutch, fancy piece, fancy woman, flame, flirt, floozy, heater, hoochie, honey, hoor, hoyden, hussy, girl-friend, inamorata, Jezebel, jilt, kate, kept-woman, kitty, lady-love, live-in, lorette (though that one might be specific to Paris 9e), lover, made, minx, mistress, moll, mot (very Dublin. that one), odalisque, other, patootie, pullet, quean, paramour, POSSLQ (person of opposite sex sharing living quarters — US Census bowdlerisation), skronk, slacken, sloven, squeeze, steady, sugar, sultana, sweetheart, sweetie, tabby, tart, tootsie, tramp, trollop, trouble-and-strife, wench, Wag …
Like many of its kind, it disappoints more than it illuminates. You will already have knowledge of many — if not most — of the entries; and among the rest there are several that leave you puzzled. The best that can be said of it is that a purchase would ensure the continuing comfort of Mr Parris (a “national treasure” wannabe) and his llamas.
This was the point at which severe doubts arose in my mind:
Democracy has been served – the people have spoken, (sotto voce) the bastards. Wendell Willkie on hearing of his defeat by President Roosevelt
The quotation is well-known enough. The attribution seems plain wrong.
It may be that Dick Tuck has angered Richard Nixon as much as any other man alive. As relentlessly as Inspector Javert trailed Jean Valjean, as doggedly as Caliban followed Prospero, as surely as a snowball seeks a top hat, Prankster Tuck stalked his quarry from one campaign to the next. “Keep that man away from me,” Nixon ordered his staff, who were seldom able to oblige. Ultimately, Nixon paid his adversary the highest compliment: in the 1972 campaign, the White House decided to employ a Dick Tuck of its own.
Since the Nixon White House’s “Dick Tuck of its own” was Donald Segretti (for more on whom, see the Woodstein masterpiece, All the President’s Men), I’d reckon Tuck won hands down.
Tuck had made many a play on Nixon until, in the 1966 mid-terms, he made a primary run for the Democrat nomination for the California Senate. He came third out of eight. Tuck was a favourite of the press reptiles, because he was ever-ready with a zinger. When he had lost the nomination he was asked his reaction. That was the cause of “The people have spoken, the bastards.”
Willkie, by the way, might be seen as the prototype for the Donald Trump — as decent as the latter is nauseating. He was the previous time the GOP had put a businessman on the Presidential ticket. As FDR’s opposite number for the crunch election of 1940, he was almost a titular figure — but he did remarkably well, taking 45% of the vote (though only ten States for 82 votes in the Electoral College). Roosevelt obviously liked and respected Willkie, and used him as an unofficial ambassador to wartime London.
All that apart, I frequently nod along in agreement with Matthew Parris’s liberal Tory columns for The Times. Which is another reason why I find this book unworthy.
Those years sitting as a boy-chorister in the stalls of St Nicholas, Wells-next-the-Sea, laid their marks upon me. For one example, I know this is from the Book of Numbers. Admittedly, I had to check to find the precise reference:
Then Moses said to them: “If you do this thing, if you arm yourselves before the Lord for the war, and all your armed men cross over the Jordan before the Lord until He has driven out His enemies from before Him, and the land is subdued before the Lord, then afterward you may return and be blameless before the Lord and before Israel; and this land shall be your possession before the Lord. But if you do not do so, then take note, you have sinned against the Lord; and be sure your sin will find you out. Build cities for your little ones and folds for your sheep, and do what has proceeded out of your mouth.” [Numbers, 32, 20-24]
There’s some decent guidance there for a modern political campaign:
don’t go in too early, but choose your time;
but do strike when the opportunity is timely;
and then get on with exploiting your expected victory and building the new society.
Now let’s consider the current state of Trumpery
My, my: the man has some problems —
the disaster of the GOP Convention;
the disgraceful, disrespectful and disloyal spat with the family of Army Capt. Humayun Khan;
the stream of lies and untruths which unravel each time, as soon as he spews them;
the strange business, particularly at a moment when he went so strong on “sacrifice”, of his five draft deferments (that’s been in the public arena since 2011, but it hasn’t caused Trump to produce a consistent account as yet);
Last Sunday’s Observer had a piece by Gaby Hinsliff, Twitter Wars. It includes this:
The chilling thing about Trump isn’t just the casual racism and sexism, the breathtaking indifference to whatever is stirred up. It’s the niggling worry that he’s lighting fires under American life not because he can’t stop himself, but as a coldly calculated means to an end. Lacking an established political machine behind him or a war chest for TV advertising, Trump has been reliant on saying ever more incendiary things to keep his name in the news – which may be why the real jaw droppers have a knack of surfacing when he most needs free publicity.
“The norms have completely gone,” says a US strategist who has worked on the last three Democrat campaigns. “I remember in 2012 we’d try and call Mitt Romney a liar for basically telling lies and David Axelrod [Barack Obama’s chief strategist] would say: ‘Change that to falsehood.’ Trump doesn’t have any of those rules whatsoever. I mean, ‘Delete your account’ was pretty much outside the limits of what Hillary would have done four years ago, but you can’t even compare that to someone who’s retweeting white supremacists and Nazi memes.
“To get free media, he has to say stuff that’s reportable, and the level of extreme language is directly linked back to that. They took a conscious decision to make a remark about Mexicans being rapists for his launch to throw a spanner in the works of the other launches. I suspect he doesn’t even particularly have a worldview; it’s driven by a need to feed this publicity machine.”
All true and good. But I note in that the even more “chilling thing”. The Trump campaign has gone beyond pushing the acceptable limits of political discourse out of “indifference”. There is a “coldly calculated” intent to coarsen the debate, in the same way an aerial bombing campaign deliberately demolishes, degenerates and dislocates enemy infrastructure before the land-based assault. If Trump can reduce the political dialogue to his gutter level, he has won.
News management
Tim Fenton, the Guru of zero-street, was yesterday puzzling over the last item of that above bulleted list: why has Melinda Trump’s “modelling” career come to the attention of the New York Post at this precise moment? Except Tim sees it in a broader perspective:
Has Murdoch Abandoned Trump?
Trump still has one formidable backer in the shape of Rupert Murdoch, who has stood by while Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse) has been The Donald’s main cheerleader, with hosts such as professional loudmouth Sean Hannity falling over themselves in their efforts to grovel before The Great Man. Then came the forced resignation of Fox News head man Roger Ailes. And that may have changed things.
That Rupe may be experiencing buyer’s remorse is hinted at as the New York Post, a Murdoch tabloid with the same subtlety level as the Sun, splashed an old photo of Trump’s current wife Melania on its front page yesterday. She used to be a nude model. The caption could have come from Kelvin McFilth himself: “THE OGLE OFFICE … Exclusive Photos … You’ve never seen a potential First Lady like this!” Yeah, phwoar, eh?!?!?
One argument the other way is: that was then, this is now. After all, wannabe UK royal princesses can now be papped in degrees of déshabillé and the world keeps turning. The ubiquitous camera/mobile phone ensures that no public embarrassment, no “wardrobe malfunction” can escape the likes of a Daily Mail‘s “sidebar of shame”.
In the matter of Mrs Trump I noticed that, as the New York Post were unveiling the object of the Donald’s affection, the man himself was going all coy and demure. Betsy Woodruff made her play for The Daily Beast:
Playboy Cover Model Donald Trump Pivots On Porn, Signs Pledge
Businessman Donald Trump posed on the cover of Playboy. GOP nominee Trump has a very different take on porn.
A day after his team praised the nude photos of his wife that the New York Postpublished, Donald Trump promised to be tough on internet pornography.
The mogul signed a document called the Children’s Internet Safety Presidential Pledge, bemoaning “unfettered internet access by youth.” In signing the pledge, Trump also promised to “[g]ive serious consideration to appointing a Presidential Commission to examine the harmful public health impact of Internet pornography on youth, families and the American culture and the prevention of the sexual exploitation of children in the digital age.”
Wheels within wheels?
I find myself deploying a nano-second, factoring in the “other who and why”.
Who and why pointed the NY Post in this direction? After all, the Post — especially at week-ends — is not an obvious reserve of investigatory journalism.
So something very odd going on.
After the plagiarised speech, there was the sudden taking-off (there’s a lot of it going on, in this context) of the claim from the lady’s own web-site that she had a degree in design and architecture, earned in Slovenia. This claim appeared in the Republican National Convention program.
Whoops! On 19th July CBS demolished this, and asserted that Melania Knav (afterwards, that became “Knauss”) had dropped out after just one year of the course. The soft-core backstreet snappers of Milan and getting-her-kit-off offered a quicker a better, quicker deal for “Melania K”.
For a summary, I defer to Martha Ross, mross@bayareanewsgroup.com, and this — please note — in the “Local Sports” section:
Trump’s sanguine response raises more questions: notably, whether he or someone in his campaign helped make sure the photos were published.
After all, the photos were published in a newspaper that has endorsed him and might be inclined to gain some P.R. leverage.
And, what would Trump himself have to gain?
Gawker and the Huffington Post have some theories. A.M. Mitchell with the Huffington Post believes the publication of the photos was timed by Trump or his people to “plant a red herring into our political news cycle.”
Mitchell drills down on the timing. The photos went online after the Republicans had a pretty disastrous convention the week before and after Hillary Clinton accepted the Democratic nomination on Thursday … And after Trump this past week incited outrage over his various comments about NATO, Russian hackers sabotaging Clinton, Vladimir Putin and the Ukraine … And after he launched his controversial and lacerating criticism of the Muslim-American parents of a slain army captain.
What’s disturbing, Mitchell said, is that by publishing the photos, “Donald Trump and the Post are hanging Melania out to dry in a culture which is still, at its core, puritanical. … They are counting on her being retributively shamed by liberals who are hungry to avenge sexist slights against Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton in order to gain what? A couple of points in the polls?”
She continues: “Donald Trump is complicit in allowing a publication which has endorsed him to victimize his own wife. If there is any story worth talking about here, that is it.”
Trump’s sanguine response raises more questions: notably, whether he or someone in his campaign helped make sure the photos were published.
After all, the photos were published in a newspaper that has endorsed him and might be inclined to gain some P.R. leverage.
And, what would Trump himself have to gain?
Gawker and the Huffington Post have some theories. A.M. Mitchell with the Huffington Post believes the publication of the photos was timed by Trump or his people to “plant a red herring into our political news cycle.”
Mitchell drills down on the timing. The photos went online after the Republicans had a pretty disastrous convention the week before and after Hillary Clinton accepted the Democratic nomination on Thursday … And after Trump this past week incited outrage over his various comments about NATO, Russian hackers sabotaging Clinton, Vladimir Putin and the Ukraine … And after he launched his controversial and lacerating criticism of the Muslim-American parents of a slain army captain.
What’s disturbing, Mitchell said, is that by publishing the photos, “Donald Trump and the Post are hanging Melania out to dry in a culture which is still, at its core, puritanical. … They are counting on her being retributively shamed by liberals who are hungry to avenge sexist slights against Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton in order to gain what? A couple of points in the polls?”
She continues: “Donald Trump is complicit in allowing a publication which has endorsed him to victimize his own wife. If there is any story worth talking about here, that is it.”
Cue Mrs Merton:
You know what comes next:
Let’s imagine the aftermath of the Trump/Knauss encounter at the Kit Kat Club, 124 W 43rd St, New York, NY 10036, (no relation), in 1998:
“So, the Donald, what first attracted you to the pneumatic (and subsequently enhanced) Miss K?”
“So, Melinda, who first attracted you to a billionaire, a quarter of a century older than yourself?”
it comes prefaced by one of the most poignant images (see above) and one I cannot recall seeing before;
and, as befits The New Yorker, comes quite sophisticated with it.
After a predictable human-interest opener, Margalit attempts a swift survey of how we arrived at caging people at Hillsborough —
the Heysel Stadium disaster, blamed here on:
rioting Liverpool supporters at a match in Brussels had triggered a stampede that caused the collapse of a stadium wall, leading to the death of thirty-nine people, most of them Italian fans of the soccer club Juventus.
Let us not bother to harp on whether a wall that collapsed was the fault of a “riot”, or whether a stadium should be organised to prevent such a “riot”, and not have walls that collapse.
the baleful influence of Margaret Thatcher, concerned not essentially with human suffering but with public image:
“We have to get the game cleaned up from this hooliganism at home and then perhaps we shall be able to go overseas again.”
Margalit then does a quick flit past Nick Hornby and Jason Cowley — both valid sources — before arriving at the key point:
Luckily for those of us who love the “beautiful game,” the culture did change. The most immediate and lasting changes were prompted by the publication, a few months after Hillsborough, of a damning report by Lord Taylor of Gosforth, later England’s Lord Chief Justice, criticizing the soccer industry’s poor treatment of supporters. The report led to a complete overhaul of stadium-safety regulations, and to the requirement that every spectator have an assigned seat.
And with that came something else:
the new seating requirement also contributed to a change in demographics. A mostly working-class fan base gave way to a middle-class and upper-middle-class clientele, the only people still able to afford tickets: adjusting for inflation, ticket prices now cost at least three times what they did in 1989, and, increasingly, clubs offer perks like champagne-on-tap V.I.P. boxes to their most deep-pocketed fans. Money coming in from TV rights has also skyrocketed, from a revenue stream of about twenty million dollars a year in 1988 to more than five billion dollars a year in 2014. Next year, the English Premier League is expected to overtake the N.F.L. as the highest-earning sports league in the world.
Time for a small declaration of interest. My Pert Young Piece, saving for her gap year, had a good thing going. Alternate Saturdays, she was on the catering/waiting detail for those V.I.P. boxes at White Hart Lane (and its American Express black cards) for the football and Harlequins for the Rugby.
So what has happened to the mostly working-class fan base?
Those who have been priced out of those “safer” stadia now frequent sports bars. [Don’t get me started on these soul-less and depressing joints, fuelled by fizzy imported beers.] The numerous screens will, inevitably, be tuned to the Sky Sports feeds. This from 2013:
Pub landlords say the cost of screening top level sport is becoming so expensive it is making them switch off from showing the likes of Premier League football and the Ashes.
One pub and restaurant owner in Tunbridge Wells said he had to call time on the satellite service after Sky wanted a staggering £2,400 a month for him to show Sky Sports in his pub.
The cost of showing Sky Sports channels in public venues varies, but the national average is said to be around £400 a month for pubs.
I can easily spot what Jerry Hall sees in her octogenarian squeeze.
Michelle Thomson (Edinburgh West), dogged by property fraud allegations, not to mention her appearance on the leaked list at a web adultery site (but she, as always in these cases, was “hacked”). Her undisclosed removal, on express instructions from the top leadership, as “Managing Director” of Business for Scotland is a trifle redolent.
Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute), with his private TV production company — though, at first sight, this one looks more technical and ignorant than much more.
Let’s put aside the worst assumption, that the whole SNP is a gigantic fraud on the public. That leaves the obvious conclusion that due diligence on candidates for the 2015 General Election was severely wanting. In the present context, especially after the expenses scandals, every party should be briefing all publicly-elected and wannabes about their obligations, requirements and duties: if an individual then transgresses, there should be no excuses.
What ought to be made clear before the 2016 Scottish Parliament election is how the Augean Stables have been given a good dose of Jeyes Fluid.
Thanks to Herald Scotland, we are now getting a chronology of who did what to whom, and when. We know some of the why — the love of money is the root of all evil — and some of the how.
It all started in July 2012. Solicitor Christopher Hales, one-time partner in Grigor Hales, solicitors, of Dalry Road, Edinburgh, was inspected by the Law Society. As a result, questions were raised over thirteen bits of property business. A month later the inspection report went to the Law Society guarantee fund sub-committee (GFSC), and in September 2012 the GFSC suspended Hales’ certificate to practice, and proceeded to prosecute him before the Scottish Solicitors’ Discipline Tribunal (SSDT).
Then everything goes into slo-mo. When there’s a serial bureaucracy as Byzantine as this one, what else can we expect? Except for one small, but worth-noticing detail: in October 2013 Sheila Kirkwood was appointed secretary to the GFSC. What we see in this sorry saga is how close the circles of power and influence are in modern Scotland. As Thomas Dibdin had it, in a broader context:
O, it ’s a snug little island! A right little, tight little island! Search the globe round, none can be found So happy as this little island.
the Law Society’s chief executive, Lorna Jack, took the unusual step of arranging a hurried press conference to defend her organisation’s handling of the affair, and the conduct of Sheila Kirkwood, who is secretary to the society guarantee fund sub-committee which handled the Hales case but had delayed handing the papers over to the Crown Office.
It emerged that Kirkwood was, with her husband and fellow solicitor Paul Kirkwood, a founder of the pro-independence campaign Lawyers for Yes, and as an active nationalist had attended dinners for Thomson’s pro-independence campaign Business for Scotland. Kirkwood had also “liked” Thomson on her Facebook page.
On 14th January, a full eighteen months after that first inspection, the Council of the Law Society lodged a complaint with the SSDT requesting an investigation into Hales.
On 13th May, Paul Marshall, the Law Society fiscal attended the SSDT hearing on the Hales case. The “accused” (or whatever periphrasis one prefers) Hales responded by e-mail to say he accepted the “averments of professional misconduct”.
In July, now two years into the epic, the Law Society published “interim findings” and a statement that Hales “must have been aware that there was a possibility that he was facilitating mortgage fraud”. Ian Smart has a superb account of these doings on his blog, nicely explaining what mortgage fraud involves, and stating
Mr Hales was found to have assisted in mortgage fraud in no less than thirteen transactions for which he ultimately appeared before the Scottish Solicitors Discipline Tribunal on 13th may 2014 and was then struck off as a solicitor.
It’s all in the judgement which, despite its length I encourage you to read in full. Numerous examples of failing to inform lenders of undisclosed deposits, including examples of Mr Hales personally returning these to the purchasers, and several examples of back to backs, all equally undisclosed to the lenders.
But Mr Hales was not the principal actor here, he was simply the facilitator.
The principal actor, time and time again, was a woman referred to in the judgement as Mrs A. Sometimes she acts directly, on others she provides a third party deposit in exchange for a “fee”.
On 31st October 2014 the SSDT published its annual report, which mentions the Hales case.
On 18th December, in a regular quarterly meeting, Ian Messer, the Law Society’s director of financial compliance, “informally” told the Crown Office about the Hales case, apparently not including the names of the clients, or presumably fingering “Mrs A”. Which is odd because of whom we now know “Mrs A” to be: a poster-girl for the SNP, a prospective parliamentary candidate, and more. Ian Smart, again:
in May 2014, when the Tribunal decision was issued, Michelle Thomson was something approaching a national figure as one of the public faces of the SNP front organisation Business for Scotland. Indeed, at first appearance, one of the few genuine business people involved with that organisation, most of the others being little more than jumped up PR men. If her up to the neck involvement in mortgage fraud had come to light just three months before the referendum this would have been disastrous for Yes Scotland, for the SNP by association, but most of all for the economic credibility of the Independence cause.
There’s the hint of the cleft inside the SNP: between the “business-friendly” Alex Salmond wing, and the wannabe social-reform clique around Nicola Sturgeon. To illustrate that further, we’d need to look at the T in the Park bung: as Deep Throat said, “Follow the money”, as we observe the Salmond ☞ Dempsie (partner of Angus Robertson MP) ☞Hyslop (which ought to bring us to the other lingering SNP stink on education) ☞ Geoff Ellis (Salmond’s guest at Ryder Cup) right little, tight littleSyphonaptera.
Which almost brings us up to date. This year, 2015, we find:
On 28th April Ian Messer again finding it necessary to mention “informally” this Hales case at the next quarterly Crown Office meeting, again — it seems — not naming the key names.
On 7th May, the good citizens of Edinburgh West, kept in ignorance of what was transpiring “behind the arras”, elected Michelle Thomson as their SNP MP.
On 1st July, having taken a “detailed look” — well, after three years, thats about right — at the Hales case, the Law Society asked the GFSC for approval to refer it to the Crown.
Following which, prontissimo, on 3rd July, the Law Society formally passed the SSDT’s Hales report to the Crown Office, so at long last all the names are in the frames
And on 9th July, the Crown instructs Police Scotland to investigate Hales’s property transactions.
By whatever Murdochian means, by the back-end of September 2015, the Sunday Times had that SSDT Hales Report, and the Scottish edition (27th September) went big on naming Michelle Thomson.
… she knew nothing of the allegations until they were reported in the media. But she added: “I am in no doubt whatsoever in my mind that if the allegations — and again I stress the word allegations — are proven to be correct, they will represent behaviour that I find completely unacceptable.”
This is what is known as “throwing someone under a bus”.
The ripples were still spreading:
On 1st October. Lorna Jack is promising the Law Society will look into why it took so long for the Crown to be advised of the whole Hales mess, and also whether there were any untoward connections between Kirkwood and Thomson.
Mr Mulholland said: … “The police have been instructed to investigate the property transactions related to that finding resulting in the solicitor being struck off.
“Police Scotland have a duty in any criminal investigation to follow the evidence and where that takes them.
“So, if during a police investigation evidence arises that other persons have been involved in criminality and fraud, or whatever crime the police have uncovered evidence of, then Police Scotland, I have complete faith in them, they will act and do the right thing as will the Crown.”
After the Lord Advocate’s appearance, Aamer Anwar, the lawyer acting for Michelle Thomson, said: “Following the Lord Advocate’s statement we must reiterate that we have advised Mrs Thomson that it would be inappropriate to comment on such matters and you will appreciate that she has already volunteered to assist Police Scotland with their investigation, despite no requirement to do so.
“Michelle Thomson maintains that she has always acted within the law.”
… unless the findings of the SSDT are wholly inaccurate, and you will note that the facts were agreed by Mr Hales, Thomson personally is toast. The sentencing guidelines are here. It qualifies for what is commonly known as exemplary sentencing so she’ll probably get several years in jail giving rise to an interesting by-election.
Faced with that lawyerly prognosis, the defendant has just two options:
take an overnight valise to the sentencing;
book the first flight out to northern Cyprus or Caracas.
The Thomson can may come, and may go. What will linger is the cesspit aroma that prevails in a one-party state (and Scotland is on that festering wikipedia list). It would be instructive to take all the names in this post, and locate their connections on a spider-chart. Be assured they would all link.
Such is the nature of power in a right little, tight little society.
England can boast as rewarding a bit of child-rape as the Cawdor Campbells. By the way, the “Calders” seem to have become “Cawdors” entirely on Bill Shagsper’s typo.
Permit me to introduce you all to Sir Thomas Grosvenor, baronet.
Already possessed of his family estate in Cheshire, on 10th October 1677 Sir Thomas, aged not-quite twenty-three, married Miss Mary Davies. Since Miss Mary was born in 1665, that makes her fully a dozen years of age.
What made Mary Davies such a ripe prospect was her inheritance: her late Daddy, Alexander Davies, had been a scrivener — a law-writer — who had come into possession of Ebury Farm, now buried under the bricks and masonry of London’s Chelsea, and other lands between Tyburn Brook and Park Lane, convenient for the imminent expansion of Westminster. All told about five hundred acres.
I’ll pause for a moment, to draw breath, sip coffee, and meditate on how Alexander Davies came to own these lands.
We have to start with Geoffrey de Mandeville, one of Guillaume le Bâtard’s William the Conqueror’s henchmen, who received this tract as a thank-you. Much of it was swampy marshland, so Geoffrey de Mandeville passed his manor to the Abbey of Westminster, doubtless for the benefit of his immortal soul. Which meant, in due course, it came back, after the monasteries were shut down, into the sweaty maw of Henry VIII. This became the “Manor of Hyde”, and was leased out.
In 1618 much of this land was acquired, a bit dubiously, by Sir Lionel Cranfield, an upwardly-mobile tradesman, who had taken several official post under James I, until he was impeached for corruption. Canfield, in due course, fell upon harder times, and sold his freehold on to Hugh Audley (as was the norm of that time, his name could be rendered as “Audley” or “Awdeley”). This involved one of those dodgy back-to-back transactions (the kind of thing that, in these days, gets solicitors struck off, and SNP MPs rendered semi-detached). Audley was a law-clerk, working in the Court of Wards and Liveries. By no coincidence, he had a side-line in money-lending, and had built himself a fat bank-roll. On Audley’s death, half-a-century later, the land passed to his grand-nephew, Alexander Davies, who promptly pegged out himself, leaving the six-month-old Mary as his heiress.
Mary was to be married off to to the Hon. Charles Berkeley, the eldest son of John, first Baron Berkeley of Stratton; but the Berkeleys had overstretched themselves, and the deal didn’t go through. Waiting in the wings was aforesaid Sir Thomas Grosvenor, who acquired the girl, sorted out the monies due to the Berkeleys, and laid out certain insurances that Mary would reach the age of 21, and inherit the property.
There are three, at least, little wrinkles here:
At the age of twelve, Mary was deemed mature enough to consent to the marriage;
the monarch, in this case Charles II Stuart, had a duty of care to orphaned wards, and it must have helped his caring soul that Grosvenor was such an upright chap, friend of the king, and a good Tory.
Throughout her life, Mary showed increasing signs of what we might be benignly-termed “mental instability”, to the extent that, in her widowhood, she was adjudged insane.
It’s by 
Since the Nixon White House’s “Dick Tuck of its own” was Donald Segretti (for more on whom, see the Woodstein masterpiece, 
Malcolm Redfellow's Home Service 