The CPS say nothing to do with us but the Met confirm:
Met Police confirms its officers did advise a newspaper vendor the Private Eye he was selling could be in contempt of court.
— lucy manning (@lucymanning) October 29, 2013
Chilling.
You’d pay quite a levy or premium on your fuel bill to wipe the smirk off their management faces.
It wasn’t a grilling. Parliament couldn’t afford the fuel. It was a little light poaching. It was coddling.
Wither-ringing quote of the day from Labour’s Ian Lavery: “How can the profits be fair if people can’t afford to pay them!”
Faced with such a confused and under-informed committee (Energy and Climate Change) the energy bosses realised they could say anything they liked.
Transparency. Trust. Fairness. Profoundly regretting putting up any prices at any time. Our passionate people working their fingers to the bone to keep the lights on by investing, yes and re-investing everything they made back into this sceptre’d isle so that the poor, the disabled, the elderly, young people, differently-sexed people, women with skin issues, fish – wouldn’t have to choose between eating and heating.
Parliament’s rules couldn’t be clearer – you cannot use taxpayer-funded parliamentary facilities for party political campaigning. Someone should tell the mystery Labour MP who had some nine boxes of Unison-printed leaflets delivered to the Portcullis House sorting office this weekend:
Coincidently who was pictured carrying that very same leaflet the following day?
Only a naughty Mayoral wannabe…
Ian Katz giving a talk on social media at the BBC Social event:
“Never direct tweet”
Police are requesting “on behalf of the Crown Prosecution Service” that magazine vendors refrain from selling today’s edition of Private Eye. This afternoon two plain clothes policemen asked this vendor working outside Farringdon Station to take down this week’s Eye. When the vendor, who does not wish to be named, asked them why, they said it was at the request of the CPS, specifically because of the cover featuring Rebekah Brooks. They showed identification. The vendor told the cops he would keep selling them unless they produced a court order. Chilling…
Down the road at the nearby Old Bailey potential jurors were asked if they were readers of Private Eye or Guido Fawkes during the selection process. If they answered affirmatively they were excused from jury service. Anyone else a little hacked off by all this?
UPDATE: Index on Censorship – the free speech campaign with offices near Farringdon Station – went to check for themselves:
https://twitter.com/mePadraigReidy/status/395205181023199232
The judge doesn’t find Private Eye amusing:
Judge tells jurors to ignore edition of Private Eye out today making 'bad taste' joke about Rebekah Brooks
— CourtNewsUK (@CourtNewsUK) October 29, 2013
UPDATE: 17.24
Private Eye front cover has been brought to our attention, but AG has decided proceedings for a potential contempt of court aren't required
— Attorney General (@attorneygeneral) October 29, 2013
The Tories are demanding that Labour release the Falkirk report again, yet when it comes to their own internal reports about bad behaviour, they are curiously silent. Despite calling in an independent investigator to get to the bottom of why thousands of pounds were were missing from 2010 campaign funds in Wandsworth, and that report being used as the basis to boot out a leading party member from an elected position, they are still refusing to publish it. The Tories are keeping the report under lock and key with those allowed to see it being given a hard copy to read under supervision. This has allowed allies of the former agent to try and spin events…
Justine Greening’s Association Chairman Mark Elliott lost his rag with Guido on the phone last night, frothing about “malicious lies spread by the press” and then claimed the “the amounts alleged are totally spurious”. He then hung up. Yet Elliott, a close ally of both Greening and Morritt, would have read the report. Perhaps he missed the conclusion about the association’s old agent:
“some of the media accusations do have substance and that the actions of Rob Morritt during his time as agent have brought the Wandsworth Conservative Group and potentially the wider party into disrepute. From not banking cash receipts to the use of the Addison Lee account for private journeys, to withdrawing cash for expenses without adequate supporting documentation, to taking reconciled salary top ups, whilst justified in his own mind, was from a professional and probity perspective totally unacceptable and fell well short of what the Group could expect from a trained agent.”
It concludes that Morritt “fell short of providing sufficient, acceptable detail to ensure that he did not gain financial advantage during his employment with the Wandsworth Group.” There’s a word for that.
All this was exposed internally in 2010. Why are senior Tories – from Cabinet level down – still defending or ignoring this?
