According to the BBC: “The Tories say they understand counter-terrorism officers were involved in searches of his home and offices.”
The “Tories” “say” they “understand”
According to the Guardian:
“counter-terrorism police arrested the shadow Home Office minister, Damian Green”
“nine counter-terrorism officers conducted simultaneous searches at four locations: Green’s constituency office and home in Ashford, Kent, his office in the House of Commons and his London home.”
Sounds pretty factual to me.
The same BBC that can give us accounts of mistreatment in Iraqi jails, can report endlessly on injustice in the US system cannot verify and report as fact the misuse of power in the nation’s capital. Why? Save Gordon.
(anyone curious why the Guardian should be a repository of fact on this topic should consider that the Guardian actually needs to be credible to retain paying customers, and has often made its way from being anti-establishment rather than just leftist.)
“More to the point, if a British connection is confirmed, everyone will wonder why Scotland Yard’s counter-terroism command has the time to arrest and question a Tory MP for embarrassing the government over immigration when its principal task is tracking those who are a real risk to the security of this nation and of others.”
Smoke screen,”See we are doing something”
Damian Green is damned lucky he wasn’t Brazilian,if he had reached for his Blackberry……
I would e-mail my MP as Arthur Dent has suggested but he has had all his computers and mobile phones taken away by the Stasi!
Grimer: I think you already know, but… the buckets of shit and schadenfreude handed out by your elites have had an effect.
Collectively, the British people won’t help themselves, so why should we help you?
It would help credibility if you would all start rioting and breaking things.
this damian green episode has finally pushed me over the edge. i’m not normally a person who gets involved in party politics, but i had to do my own “enough is enough” statement.
i joined the Libertarian Party today.
http://lpuk.org
sobers | 28.11.08 – 1:36 pm
just saw tony benn doing the same thing on C4 news.
meanwhile, on the mumbai thing – mail is reporting that SEVEN of the terrorists were british
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1089711/Massacre-Mumbai-Up-SEVEN-gunmen-British-came-area-7-7-bombers.html
Zevilyn is quite right. However important the events in Bombay, they are clearly being used by the BBC to douse the flames surrounding the persecution of an opposition MP by our corrupt government.
Endless hours of speculation and froth have been broadcast, calculated to fill the airwaves, while McStalin and his filthy cohorts further subvert what little remains of our Constitution that they haven’t already destroyed.
And, of course, the very timing of the raid can hardly have been coincidental, can it?
This was a contempt of our Parliament. Policemen and ZaNuLabour politicians deserve to go to prison for this.
mumbai massacre, in pictures
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/11/mumbai_under_attack.html
picture no.5 of one of the terrorists has to be one of the most disturbing photos in years.
note that the ak47 is blurred – and his arm is outstretched – he is raising the ak47 prior to opening fire on people in the train station.
Knacker,
I’ve been saying to friends for quite a while, that as soon as I see/hear about the beginnings of a ‘crowd’ in Westminster, I’ll be down there with my trusty cricket bat.
As with all revolutions against totalitarian states, you don’t want to be involved in a ‘riot of one’.
Just as the crowd turned on Ceauşescu, I think it will turn on Brown and his illegitimate regime. The trouble is, he’s banned protests within Whitehall and people now get arrested for walking in that area while wearing Guido Falkes masks.
Grimer | 28.11.08 – 9:02 pm
but you dont get arrested if you wear a hijab.or have a placard with “death to kuffars” written on it.
maybe thats what any potential revolutionairies should do – dress up as muslims.
They’d probably open Downing Street’s gates for you.
For all the good it will do, I’ve written to my MP:
Dear Harry Cohen,
As a member of this increasingly illegitimate regime, which is hell-bent upon the destruction of our nation, what are you planning to do about the arrest of Damian Green?
You, as a member of this ‘government of all the nutjobs’, are accountable to me and my fellow constituents. You are not above the law. No matter what your opinions of the Conservative Party, this man’s arrest is an affront to democracy. Your government is behaving like a banana republic.
Mugabe and Brown are cut from the same cloth:
Mugabe: Unelected Head of Government
Brown: Unelected Head of Government
Mugabe: Accuses political opponents of undermining economy
Brown: Accuses political opponents of undermining economy
Mugabe: Arrests opposition politicians
Brown: Arrests opposition politicians
Mugabe: Blames wrecked economy on foreign countries
Brown: Blames wrecked economy on foreign countries
Mugabe: Economic Plan – print more money
Brown: Economic Plan – print more money
Will you speak out for democracy? Will you speak out against tyranny? Or (as we all expect) will you stick your snout further into the public trough and close your ears to the concerns of your countrymen?
If you have any decency, you will cross the house at the first opportunity (but we both know that isn’t about to happen).
Your inaction will be remembered at the next election.
Yours sincerely,
by the way – if you are going to involve yerselfs in a protest, learn by heart what your name is in either Welsh or Irish gaelic.
there’s a weird loophole – as both languages are recognised official lanaguages of the UK now – so when the coppers try to look up your name on one of their hand held devices, they wont find it.
but its not illegal to say your name in welsh or irish. so they can do sweet f-all about it.
of course, when the bastards force id cards on us , then we wont be able to do this.. but until then, enjoy learning a bit of gaelic.
it’ll come in handy.
What’s the Gaelic phonetic spelling/pronunciation of Grimes?
Grimer | 28.11.08 – 9:23 pm
to be fair to tony benn – he came out with all guns blazing on C4 about it and backed up Green to the hilt.
we’re on very dangerous territory.
a civil war was triggered in england because the king wanted to arrest MPs. anyone who has a sense of history can see this. obviously brown does not give a fuck about history, since year zero happened in 1997.
yer out of luck with Grimes – thats 100 per cent solid English. goes back to the middle ages, and is the name of several English settler families in Ireland.
no luck with getting that into gaelic i’m afraid.
sorry!
I think it is actually a Norman name, but is now most common in Ireland (which is where my father’s ancestors originated).
Oh well, I can always tell them that I am speaking Gaelic 😉
It’s all too much | 28.11.08 – 6:54 pm | #
the only people i trust to investigate this are daily mail, spectator and private eye.
but you’re right. prove that brown /smith knew and it is the scoop of your career.
Time to reconvene the 1642 Club.
Clearly the UK Labour government is worried about the whole truth coming out about its continuing open-door, mass immigration policy. To say the least, The Labour leadership will not be unhappy about what is happening to Damian Green, Tory MP, and Shadow on Immigration.
The contrast between UK Labour’s 11 years of stealth mass immigration can be sharply contrasted with the attitudes of political parties in the Netherlands.
While UK Labour campaigns for more mass immigration, including EU membership for 75 million Muslim Turks (of whom over 1 million will settle in the UK), the Dutch political parties, left and right, are more controlling in their attitudes on immigration:
“Dutch socialists champion left-wing case against immigration”
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/45957,opinion,dutch-socialists-champion-the-left-wing-case-against-immigration
Of course, the leader of the Dutch People’s Party, Geert Wilders, has been campaigning against mass immigration for some time:
‘A View from the Right’:
“Three cheers for Geert Wilders”
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/009948.html
Michael Crick and Newsnight seem to be trying to turn this story into an anti-Conservative story, do I detect the spinning hand of Peter Mandelson?
Archduke, vote tory until the fat scot is gone please.
Then vote lib or whoever.
Thanx
Michael Crick and Newsnight seem to be trying to turn this story into an anti-Conservative story, do I detect the spinning hand of Peter Mandelson?
NotaSheep | 28.11.08 – 11:02 pm | #
Yup – just saw it.
Definitely a NULAB damage limitation attempt.
There was a strangely inconsistent logic though.
While telling us that Green would have broken the law if he actually solicited information – they showed an old interview clip of young Gordon Brown admitting to doing exactly the same thing.
They then summed it up as the Tories possibly being in big trouble – without pointing out that Brown had done exactly the same.
Doublespeak again.
Why are you lot surprised. Shouldn’t this also apply to BBC reporters who get ‘sensitive’ information leaked to them?
I couldn’t believe the paltry spot this affair got on the Ten O’Clock News.
In particular, no-one asks what seems to me the killer point: if Boris and Cameron were informed it simply beggars belief that Gordon Brown or Jacqui Smith were not. The Tories need to hammer this one – it’s so obviously wrong that it’s not up to them to prove it, it’s up to Labour to prove otherwise.
Read the details of Damian Green’s arrest. Questioned for NINE HOURS.The Speaker Michael Martin gave the police full access.
It is beyond belief that the Speaker did not inform the Party or Ministers about this.
As a counterblast to Labour (and BBC ‘Newsnight’s pro-Labour spin on this tonight)-
‘Daily Mail’ tomorrow:
“Police State Britain:
This MP’s crmie was to reveal truths Labour didn’t want you to know”
[Extract]:
“Tory MPs contrasted the case with that of leaks of sensitive information to BBC business editor Robert Peston.
“They raised suspicions that a ‘mole’ inside Downing Street or the Treasury had passed Mr Peston a string of market-moving banking ‘scoops’.
Former Tory leader Michael Howard pointed to Mr Brown’s reputation for obtaining Government leaks when he was an Opposition MP.
“‘If this approach had been in place when Gordon Brown was in opposition, he’d have spent half his time under arrest,’ he said.
“Miss Smith denied that ministers had been involved in any way in the arrest of Mr Green.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1090386/Police-state-Britain-This-MPs-crime-reveal-truths-Labour-didnt-want-know.html
Michael Crick and Newsnight seem to be trying to turn this story into an anti-Conservative story, do I detect the spinning hand of Peter Mandelson?
NotaSheep | 28.11.08 – 11:02 pm | #
disgusting treatment of this story by newsnight.
conclusion was that green was trying to procure information and therefore deserved it.
just to add to my fury they even had martin salter on telling us how national security was at risk…
http://www.muckspreading.com/mpSalter.asp
More are wondering at what role the Speaker Michael Martin played in the arrest of Green. Totally improbable that Martin would give the police access without giving his boss a heads up.
Can anybody help me with the sequence of events here?
Was it that the Bombay attack occurred and then Damian Green was arrested?
If so, was the Bombay attack used as cover for the Green arrest?
I mean, as we know by now, Muslim terrorism always provides good cover to bury bad news.
But maybe I’m wrong.
What does anybody think of this possibility?
Perhaps I was being a little too paranoid. But it was just a thought.
I was surprised at the strength of Crick’s piece on Newsnight tonight.
A bit of background on the civil servant – worked for a while in Jaqui Smifs policy department or something like that, as well as being a bog standard Home Office civil servant. Plus a handy bit of distraction by discussing how important national security was (even though the stories Green aired were embarrassing not dangerous). The sinister bit was ending the piece by saying that senior Tories may also be in the firing line with Green for getting hold of leaks.
I should bloody hope so if they’ve been doing their duty of holding the executive to account. The Government clearly don’t like it up ’em.
Why did the police do their raid when they did?
Just as the parliamentary recess started.
Seems like political guidance at work in the scheduling.
LITTLEJOHN:
“Damian Green’s arrest is a monstrous abuse of power by the same gangsters who hounded Dr. David Kelly to death”
[Extract]:
“An Opposition spokesman is arrested without warning on trumped-up conspiracy charges and thrown into jail. His home, constituency and parliamentary offices are simultaneously raided by 20 anti-terrorist officers.
“It sounds like Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or East Berlin before the Wall came down. But this happened in Britain, in the past 48 hours – the most terrifying manifestation to date of Labour’s Stasi State.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1090394/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-Damian-Greens-arrest-monstrous-abuse-power-gangsters-hounded-Dr-David-Kelly-death.html
‘Daily Mail’
“Analysis: This is a declaration of political war”
[Extract]:
“The next election campaign started last night, and it promises to be one of the nastiest, dirtiest and hardest fought in modern British political history.
“The arrest of Damian Green, almost certainly with the prior knowledge of Michael Martin, the Labour MP who is Speaker of the House of Commons, and probably with the tactic support of Labour ministers, marks a fundamental break with the political Geneva Convention, the unspoken terms on which parties do business in Westminster.
“Yes, it was the act of a totalitarian state, but it was also a declaration of political war. ”
(E. Heathcoat-Amory).
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1090283/ANALYSIS-This-declaration-political-war.html
People are angry; this is a comment from Nick Robinson’s blog – 10. At 2:18pm on 28 Nov 2008, U9461192 wrote:
#17
I just think that sort of thing is a waste of space, and if people focused on the real issues of policy and MP’s competence
Right-ho. Let’s talk about competence.
If an MP doubled national debt in the most benign period of world history would you call him incompetent?
No? What if he was so full of himself that he declared he would end the economic cycle using the power of his mind alone would you call him deranged’. If instead of ending boom and bust he presided over the biggest housing boom and bust in UK history would you call him incompetent?
No? Okay. How about if his entire boom was achieved by borrowing 300bn quid and flooding it into the economy would you call him incompetent? If, during his reign of terror, folk took him at his word and borrowed themselves to the point where we are the most indebted nation not only in Europe but the entire know universe would you call him incompetent.
Wow. That is a high bar you have set there for incompetence.
Does Robert Mugabe clear the bar?
And if his big plan to get out of this hole of his own making was to double national debt on top of his initial doubling ie quadruple national debt what word would you use?
A) Incompetent
B) Deranged
C) Sociopath
D) All of the above”
above NotaSheep ays:
I am not generally a believer in conspiracy theories, preferring to believe in the cock-up theory of politics; however there is something not right about….
————-
I agree with the first part of your comment.
The local councils use anti-terror legislation in connection with snooping on households to see what rubbish they throw out – did the government know beforehand what these politically-correct-1984-types were going to do? Obviously not. Are the govt glad the councils abused their power? Probably not – bad publicity for the govt. So why did it happen?
It is just a case of if pc, 1984, bossy, snoopy, nosey, Labour-loving, England-hating Guardian-reading, BBC-loving types are in power they will abuse their power. Councils are overflowing with them, recruited through the pages of the Guardian.
Now they are taking over the police force. When they pop up at inspector level, they naturally take the side of the criminal, but each act they do is not a govt. conspiracy, just an outcome of promoting these types. If you create a monster what do you expect?
Albert the cat – don’t you think that if the gov were behind the D Green episode they would not want to hide the news – they would want to frighten the opposition and make a story – ie watch out we will come after you too-?
I do not think G Brown was behind it because the scandal would be too great especially after he denied knowledge on TV
The motive was probably more to do with personal reasons – vindictiveness – grudges – etc D Green must have a lot of enemies when you bear in mind the stories he has exposed – a lot of the pc 1984 brigade in power will hate him and they have friends in the police.
The BBC, along with the Labour government, seems to have gone quiet on this, but:
Matthew Parris, ‘Times’:
“An outrage that brings shame on Britain”
[Extract]:
“On the whole, and in the main, and everything considered, you do not in a democracy go around arresting the Opposition. For some time now, web humorists have been spelling new Labour ‘Nu-Labour’. As reports of Damian Green’s arrest swirled yesterday, the prefix ZA attached itself to the bloggers’ joke: ZANU-Labour. If by lunch I had heard the comparison with Zimbabwe once, I had heard it a dozen times.
“Nine – nine – counter-terrorism officers? Raids (for that is what we would call them in Russia) on the home and offices of a senior member of the Opposition? What a blunder. What an outrage. What a stupid, stupid, thing to do. The best argument for doubting that ministers had anything to do with the arrest of a mild-mannered and distinctly herbivorous Shadow Immigration Minister is that this is a gift to the Tories, and incredibly damaging to a governing party whose Prime Minister enjoys a reputation for bullying.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article5254217.ece
Go to the Newsnight I-Player for last night and watch Gordon Brown defending his use of leaked information in a 1985 interview with Frank Bough (time code 23.17)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fvb44
Watch the final smirk as he admits to having a permanent “mole” in the Tory government.
The Tories ahould saturate the media and blogosphere with this clip – which says everything about this scandal and this bloody goverment in a few grisly seconds.
Needless to say, ex-prospective Labour MP Crick fails to draw the obvious conclusion.
Good extract above from George R.
What has happened is just another indication that Britain is deteriorating rapidly.
Labour types in power here there and everywhere, what do you expect? And by Labour types I mean the kind of person who likes to form a large part of the Question Time audience (and panel) – trade union officials, sociology lecturers, teacher trainers, local government officials, eco-warriors, BBC lovers etc.
You don’t see plumbers, housewives etc whom Labour claim to represent.
Until people start thinking about the policies of MPs they vote for instead of blindly voting according to a gut feeling about what class/group they think they belong to, it will only get worse.
Maybe one good outcome of the credit crunch is that less money will be available for the big 1984 project, ie less for the EU, global warming scams, grants to Labour’s friends, and another good thing will be fewer diversity co-ordinators, anti-discrimination project outreach leaders etc. The revenue of the Guardian will fall as they carry fewer job adverts.
And the best outcome would be the scrapping of the BBC licence fee.
Worth reading,
” The operation was authorised by Met Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick, Britain’s most senior counter-terrorism officer.
The Crown Prosecution Service was also consulted.
Sources said Mr Green is suspected of actively seeking leaked information, not just receiving it.
Met Deputy Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson, who has effectively been running the Met since Sir Ian Blair announced his resignation two months ago, was briefed by Mr Quick in advance.
Sir Ian, who officially stepped down yesterday, was not aware of the operation.
In the 30 minutes leading up to the raids, Sir Paul rang London Mayor Boris Johnson and Tory leader David Cameron.”
Add in the Speaker Michael Martin and you have quite an impressive collection of top brass who knew.
So how is it that the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and her Master Gordon Brown didn’t?
The phones must have been burning.
I spent five years in the senior Civil Service (forgive me!) and the message was always: “No surprises. The briefings must always ensure ministers there are no surprises.” People hunched over PCs typing constantly in Whitehall. It is beyond belief that top brass did not know in advance. Operationally you are signing your own death warrant if you act unilaterally. A firewall is also necessary to ensure the top brass can deny knowing. It is the entire job of the middlemen to ensure their bosses know everything. Where is the Freedom of Information Act when you most need it? We are not talking about an option appraisal, we are talking about acknowledged failures in the management of the immigration system, and we are customers paying for this. Its not their right to keep it “secret”.
Of course Gordon Brown did not know anything about the arrest of Mr. Green, just as Hitler knew nothing about the murder of jews.
the story has now be relegated to the sidebar. Replaced by a report from the proceedings of the Labour “progress” thinktank.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7756947.stm
Apparently the ex immigration minister thought immigration officers were “shits” because they treated assylym seekers skeptically – and here is the clincher – because some people were dishonest.
This raises some interesting questions
1) Hopeless naivety?
2) Ideological blindness?
3) really couldn’t give a f*ck about border control but forced to do it for presentational reasons?
It is clear that she holds the few immigration officers we have in contempt – obviously fascist bastards, why else would they want the job? It illustrates how the Labour party must feel about the immigration issue.
Not only is the door open, it locked open and anyone who tries to close it is a “shit”.
Labour ideologues: I hate them, I do hate them
sorry, forgot to extract the key quote
“One of the reasons immigration officers are shits is actually because some people cheat and they decide everyone is like that,”
note ONE of the reasons…
The totalitarian nature of the left-wing establishment that runs this country and the disaster towards which they lead us, makes me seriously consider leaving the UK for good.
We seem to be powerless. Websites such as this one are good, insofar as one can communicate with others who feel almost exactly the same as oneself.
But is web activity anything more than just a safety valve?
We don’t control the country – they do. I despair.
Of course Brown knew about this,he wasn’t there,Brown is never there when anything happens.
Thge BBC will be on to this latest development – as -er, soon as -er, possible:
“Bugging scandal inside the Commons”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/bugging-scandal-inside-the-commons-1041637.html
AND:
“MPs fear security forces now have ‘open door’ to snoop”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/mps-fear-security-services-now-have-open-door-to-snoop-1041652.html
It is no coincidence that Labour is so dictatorial on the issue of its stealth policy, (omitted from Labour election Manifestos), of MASS IMMIGRATION. The Britsh people rightly blame Labour for the many huge, negative, and irreversible consequences of its open-door immigration ‘policies’ of the past 11 years.
We can expect BBC political bias to be particularly exposed on the Damian Green issue as it is a challenge to two BBC principles: 1.)loyalty to Labour; 2.)and to BBC multicultural commitment to mass immigration to UK.
‘Telegraph’, Matthew d’Ancona:
“Labour doesn’t mind leaks so long as it is doing the leaking”
[Extract]:
“Immigration is – and has long been – a high priority for voters, consumed by a growing suspicion that they are having the wool pulled over their eyes by a Government incapable of policing the nation’s borders. Thirty years ago, public anxiety of this sort was indeed motivated mostly by fear of cultural change and ever-greater ethnic diversity.
“In 2008, ethnicity is no longer, I believe, the key issue: it is control. The voters simply do not believe that the Government is up to running the system, making it work.”
Hippiepooter – It seems the triumph of their hard left, black power, anti-semite President elect across the pond
With all due respect – cobblers. Who is Obama’s designated handler, sorry I mean, Whitehouse chief of staff, the first cabinet member to be announced?
A men who before Desert Storm ran away to join the army, the Israeli army.