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.
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| 2 Russian Agents, now safe in Moscow |
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| 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.
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| Fantasist Carl Beech (got 18 years jail) |
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| 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.
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| Tinsel Town Duo |
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| 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.
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| Partisan Mr Speaker Bercow |
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| 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.
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| Lady Hale, with her spider brooch |
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| 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
