by John Ward
Craig Murray is going to jail for eight months, and Her Majesty the Queen’s speech is a recipe for more of the same in the future.
Sometimes, a column of commentary has to begin with a central statement that would normally be a sign-off. This is a device I’ve used with some success in the past to overcome the St Vitus Dance of online attention deficit: it isn’t, I hasten to add, me having a go at the 7,000+ loyal readership at The Slog.
I offer everyone reading this a very simple weapon against the Smuggy>Fluffy>Lefty complex who regard the MSM’s propagandised news output and the UK Judiciary’s flagrant rulings and verdicts as security bibs to suck on while underneath the duvet. It’s this: if people break the law because that’s the only way they can reveal heinous political interference in the justice process, then there is something badly wrong with that law: and jailing the dissident is nothing less than judges choosing to be complicit in the perversion…..shooting the messenger who arrives to tell the generals that the battle has been lost because their strategy was flawed.
I know this is going to fall on acres of stoney ideology and barren brains, but it’s not the Rule of Law that forms the bedrock of a Free Speech society, it’s equality before the Law. And only the separation of judicial and Executive political powers can even begin to guarantee that. I apologise for the laboured nature of bold italicisation here, but the Smuggy>Fluffy>Lefty rainbow of golden pots are so ignorant and blind in 2021, like their hero Joe Biden the Hologram Hollowman, they neither get it nor – frankly – give a damn about it.
The disgusting “legal” hounding of Trump supporters by élitist Bidenite bigots in the US is a horror to behold. But the imprisonment of Julian Assange, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) and now Craig Murray is not the prosecution of evil so much so much as the persecution of dissidents, in order that the Devil might remain free to ride out.
This post now becomes a game of two halves: political prisoners, and a Queen who is the prisoner of diabolical political whoring at the Court of King Corrupticas Globalum.
THE PRISONERS
Former UK diplomat-turned blogging whistleblower Craig Murray was sentenced to eight months in prison at the High Court in Edinburgh for contempt of court resulting from his coverage of the trial of former Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond. A number of points are obvious in this case, and I find it bizarre to the point of highly suspicious that the troika of judges who passed sentence chose to ignore them.
The first is that Murray did not stick two fingers up to the Court trying Alex Salmond for a scoop: he did it to point out what a grubby little political stitch-up the entire case was. Reading out the sentence against Craig Murray, Judge Lady Leeona J Dorrian, who also presided over Salmond’s trial, headed the panel of senior Scottish judges that heard Murray’s contempt of court case. In reading out the court’s sentence, she said that Murray’s actions created “a real risk that sex-offence complainers may be reluctant to come forward in future cases”. Such a judgement is so blinkered and daft as to raise further suspicions about the motives involved here.
The second is that the justice system picked on Murray for coming close to identifying who the ‘sex pest’ female complainants were, when several MSM went further than he did, but got off Scott-free. Dorrian called Craig’s offence “at the upper end of such cases”: so if it was so serious, why didn’t the press journos get their collars felt too? (One of the MSM infractions involved a taped and broadcast interview).
The third is that a custodial sentence for such a level of offence was way above what such a case should attract. The eight-months of porridge handed out was massively criticised by a number of veteran Scottish journalists and lawyers; senior NUJ official and SNP member Hugh Kerr called the verdict “…disgraceful….a genuine threat to civil liberties – the women who were supposedly identified all remain anonymous, but Alex Salmond’s life was destroyed, and now Craig’s life is about to be destroyed too.” In fact, Scottish law sources tell me they believe this to be the first time a complainant identity has not been revealed, but the journalist involved went to prison.
Salmond faced 13 charges, several of which collapsed under examination, one of which was withdrawn by the State, and the rest dismissed by the jury. Two of the women involved, it became very likely during the trial, had perjured themelves….but were not charged. In short, Salmond was completely cleared – but his power base in the SNP was destroyed. We all know who stood to benefit from that. Craig Murray – a fervent supporter of Scottish nationalism – has also defended Julian Assange and been a virulent critic of his treatment while in Britain. So he was on the Naughty Step from Day 1.
In recent months, SNP fuhrerin Nicola Sturgeon has been heavily criticised for alleged false witness and perversion of justice. Condemned by the great majority, she remains in her position.
In the period 2013-15, a lot of public figures – from Rupert Murdoch via Jeremy Hunt, Rebekah Brooks and Piers Morgan to James Murdoch and other senior journalists at both the Sun and the Daily Mail – should (many would argue) have gone to jail.
Tory Tim Yeo falsified taxi emissions in his company’s favour, and did not go to jail. Boris Johnson tried to spike the Hackgate enquiry, and did not go to jail.
Cameron’s press secretary Andy Coulson was found guilty of one charge of conspiracy to intercept voicemails, and was sentenced to 18 months in prison on 4 July 2014. On another more serious court case against him, the Judge directed dismissal without asking the jury. Coulson served just five months in an open prison.
Let’s forget about equality before the Law, shall we? It doesn’t exist in Britain.
THE QUEEN’S SPEECH
….or What Boris Did Next. The Speech outlining government priorities over the coming year sailed happily through the MSM media reportage this week without, as they say, touching the sides. This is most probably because it didn’t have any loverats, large chests, huge buttocks, celeb divorces or Soap star’s Drug Hell in it. Several titles remarked that Her Maj had decided to leave her Crown at home – a fact that I chose to interpret as Queen Elizabeth’s silent rebellion against what she was being asked to read out.
The content is a sad but consistent continuation of every Government’s determination to give its allies more powers, and its citizens less of everything from liberty to money. Most of it was a barely disguised lurch away from local power towards top-down dictation by Boris and his Bought Bumblies.
A Planning Bill will remove the power from local planning authorities to turn down housing developments if they “meet set standards” (by whom?) and force local authorities to set new zones for housing. It’s classic Westminster ‘we know best’ when they palpably don’t, and it brings the construction industry (massive contributors to the Conservative Party) closer to Number Ten, whose occupants have, shall we say, certain cash flow problems here and there. More potential sleaze, more steps towards the corporate State.
The same is true of a new NHS Bill. When pols don’t know what to do about something, they shout verbs suffixed by Up or Down. Sometimes it’s a crackdown, but this one is billed as a shakeup. It will give ministers ( aka Manflu Halfcock) more direct control over the running of the health service, thus allowing Number 10’s équipe of highly-paid expert vaccine sales training staff to teach medics how to persuade patients to be guinea pigs in the trial of half-baked genetic drugs.
It’d be nice to fix NHS hygiene problems, investigate those PHE staff complicit in overstating Covid19 deaths by 22% and fire about 70% of the hugely rewarded top end Trust bureaucrats. Even better would be the regionalised mutualisation of the Health Service. That isn’t going to happen
Another planned measure guaranteed to goad the ‘Kill the Bill’ Antifa to Wimmin tribes is the Police & Crime Bill. It awards Plod the power to shut down protests that breach noise limits (such as?) to impose time limits, increase fines for organisers who breach the rules (such as?) and generally impinge further upon the Right of Assembly. More confrontations (exactly what Extinction Rebellion wants) and more opportunities to look tough (exactly what Boris wants).
Social care (bound to face huge cuts in the aftermath of Scamdemic Lockdowns) is mentioned once in a series of vapid sentences like ‘ministers will “bring forward” proposals later this year and legislation at an unspecified time in the future’. Or put another way, nothing this year at all.
Suitably draped in diaphanously skimpy veils is the long-awaited (but inevitable) start of broadscale internet tactics designed to shut up (and down) wicked trouble-making blogs like this one. Thus the Online Safety Bill will force ISPs and platforms generally to ‘become better at removing harmful content’ and – should they fail in this endeavour – ‘to impose fines of up to £18 million, or 10 per cent of a company’s global turnover, if they fail to show a duty of care to users’ like MPs, crooked cops, City fraudsters, Health Whistleblowers and so forth. Criminal sanctions against company executives are expected to be held as a “reserve power” and implemented in future if necessary. Right then.
There is no sign of any Bill to stop State-orchestrated Fake News in the mainstream media….but then, there wouldn’t be.
We very desperately need a functioning form of effective Opposition in Britain, and it is not the Labour Party – nor will it ever be. Worse still, for the time being there’s no point in ‘Resistance’ members sitting in the Westminster Palace, for that merely feeds the systemic beast of grubby deals, grumpy nationalists and lobbyist spivs.
Such Opposition as we have is neutered at Westminster and hopelessly split at local level, where corporacratic guns can be more effectively spiked. Nothing has demonstrated that more than the Tory victory in Hartlepool. We need a united Front of ideology-free liberty-focused reformers in the mould of Greece’s original Syriza, minus only the Socialism. Egos from here on will simply get in the way: as of now, we are engaged in a struggle to protect localism, mutuality, morality and freedom from the encroaching centralisation of the Surveillance State.