Sunday, October 13, 2019

ENCROACHMENT



We all believe we have certain inalienable rights and, although no man is an island, we do try to live in our own independent “bubble”. Similarly, we believe that our nation lives by certain rules and values which it is our duty to uphold, even if that is inconvenient or even painful. Both our private and national rights are currently under siege in a process I call “encroachment” – intrusion upon our rights and a gradual but aggressive advance beyond usual or acceptable limits. This process seems to be accelerating and needs to be halted in its tracks.

As regards private rights, we most basically seek personal security from being assaulted or murdered in our beds. Mr. Putin’s lackeys, who attempted 2 murders and carelessly perpetrated another with their 2018 Novichok poison attack in Salisbury have not been called to account. They escaped the UK police and have no doubt returned as heroes to Unit 29155, the GRU assassination squad, let loose unrestrained in Europe. Diplomatic sanctions against Russia have been predictably ineffective.

 A less exotic threat is the knife, wielded by gangs of feral youths, especially in London, clocking up 110 violent deaths so far this year (132 in all of 2018). The Mayor and the Metropolitan Police do not seem to have an answer. Compare this with Sir Percy Sillitoe, who as Chief Constable of Glasgow in the 1930s, energetically eliminated the sectarian razor gangs which had been terrorizing that city. The solution to this alarming problem requires civic firmness and committed leadership, both qualities sadly absent from our protectors.


2 Russian Agents, now safe in Moscow
Knives confiscated in London

The Police is normally a well-respected institution but what are we to make of Operation Midland, an enquiry into an alleged paedophile ring of VIP perverts? The Police believed the uncorroborated testimony of one Carl Beech, a far from impressive character and subsequently proved to be a fantasist. An independent report stated that the Police had made few enquiries about Beech, misled judges about evidence in support of warrants and generally behaved in a naïve and incompetent fashion. Scotland Yard duly made its ritual apology but Field-Marshal Bramall, erstwhile Home Secretary Leon Brittan and Tory MP Harvey Proctor had been dragged down into the mire by these false accusations. No disciplinary actions are to be taken: why not?


The sad suspicion is that the Police are so obsessed with being “politically correct” that they have lost their common sense and, in the process, lose sight of their first duty of protecting the public. A “politically correct” legal Establishment covers and protects them.


Fantasist Carl Beech (got 18 years jail)
Met Chief Cressida Dick (made a Dame)
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The Establishment routinely sucks the life-blood from the taxpaying people. The Royal family command much respect but the high life and low company of arrogant Prince Andrew damage the monarchy, not to mention his ghastly “Fergie” and their idle daughters. Once-popular Prince Harry seems to have a tin ear when it comes to building public trust. He and Meghan face the choice of joining café society, with all its perils and ephemeral pleasures, or of battening down to a life of public duty, with its longueurs but substantial privileges.


Tinsel Town Duo
Scandal and Embarrassment



 




Disappointment with elevated personalities seeps down to lesser beings. John Bercow, Speaker of the House of Commons, is almost beyond parody. Once a bantam-cock Tory, he has entirely abandoned the neutrality required by his famous Office and instead has conducted an egotistical vendetta against government policy and interpreted procedures in a partisan fashion. He has substantially diminished the prestige of the Speaker, perhaps irreparably. A much-loved institution has been damaged by his encroachments.


Descending further, I hear echoes of the 2009 MPs expenses scandal with the SNP Lady Provost of Glasgow, Eva Bolander, claiming on expenses 23 pairs of shoes, 6 jackets, 5 coats and an expensive hat. The cost of £8k does not play well in deprived areas of Scotland – no illegality is alleged but yet again our representatives show a contempt for their constituents.


Partisan Mr Speaker Bercow











Carefree Glasgow Provost Eva Bolander





Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who will guard the guards themselves?) is the age-old question. One answer is the Supreme Court, who could be relied upon to protect the conventions and usages of our unwritten constitution. No longer, alas, as its partisan ruling against Boris’ proroguing of Parliament proved. I was much puzzled by this episode until a good friend pointed out to me the striking resemblance of Lady Hale, President of the Court to non-other-than Mrs Dutt-Pauker from the old Telegraph Peter Simple column. You will recall that Mrs Dutt-Pauker was the immensely rich Hampstead Socialist intellectual, admirer of Stalin, embracer of every “liberal” cause, rumoured lover of Walter Ulbricht of East Germany, retaining the services of the Maoist Albanian au pair Gjoq. Not at all ideologically like Lady Hale, of course, but I do imagine Lady Hale feels maternal empathy for strident Greta Thunberg, the fanatical carbon footprint campaigner who was unaccountably not awarded a Nobel Prize by that august Swedish/Norwegian body.


Lady Hale, with her spider brooch
Snarling Greta Thunberg

 
Am I too easily shocked and alarmed by the failures of responsibility and by the idiocies of supposedly well-informed people? Why were the breaches in the rules evident from Neil Woodford’s fund management tolerated by the FCA? Millions of pounds of investors’ funds are at stake. Why did the management of Thomas Cook ignore advice, pocket huge salary packages and ruin thousands of hard-won holidays for their customers? Where were the auditors, ABTA or the CAA? Why are daily internet and telephone scams unpoliced by the staggeringly rich social media companies?


The days of deference towards and trust in the good intentions of many institutions have withered on the vine.


SMD
13.10.19.
Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2019

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