Facts by themselves can often feed the flame of Maddie-ness, is a post from: Anna Raccoon

They say if you stand still in Piccadilly Circus for long enough, eventually everyone in the world will pass by. Rummaging in the murky depths of ‘Operation Ore’ is beginning to acquire the same quality.

I wrote on Tuesday of the Chief Constable who was preparing to defy the writ of the High Court in the matter of returning the property of one Jim Bates. I note that the BBC have now removed the page that I linked to which I found alarming in its description of Jim Bates as a ‘fake expert’. In the light of the news last night of an accepted 2,000 children being the subject of abuse in Ireland, I have most productively overturned a few more stones in those hills.

The postulate that ‘children must be protected from the dangers of paedophilia’ is a self evident truism that is driving an entire industry, and allowing some remarkable players to apparently ride a moral ‘high horse’ over the rule of law.

I have neither sympathy nor support for child abusers, nor for the industry of paedophiliac pornography. However, I do not believe that the crime of child abuse is more important than the rule of law. That said, let us take a look at some of the facts lurking under these stones.

There is no ‘university of investigation into paedophilia’. No accredited qualifications. The authority of Colin Port, and Jim Gamble of  CEOP, moral and legal,  lies purely within the rule of law – as Police Officers, although a connection with Ireland would appear to be a useful item on a CV. Curiously, both were Police Officers working in Northern Ireland, indeed Jim Gamble is believed to hail from a village just a dozen miles south of the home town of one Gerry McCann, who is fast becoming another self styled expert in paedophilia. Jim Bates is not a policeman, and his accreditation as an ‘expert’ is dependent on the opinion of the presiding judge in any case – and no-one else [2009] EWHC 942 (Admin).

Jim Gamble spent twenty five years in the police force there, rising to become head of the Northern Ireland anti-terrorist intelligence unit. Colin Port, whilst deputy Chief Constable of Norfolk, was the officer in charge of the investigation into the murder of Rosemary Nelson, who had complained before her death of being threatened by RU officers. Even more curiously, the Chief Constable of Norfolk at the time was Carole Howlett, who was also the spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police on Operation Ore, and later for the private ACPO organisation, a forerunner of CEOP, later to become Jim Gamble’s ‘platform’ in the ‘business’ of child abuse and on-line pornography.

Since Operation Ore was launched on the basis of 7200 names provided to the British Police as subscribers to a US based Pornography ring, Avon and Somerset police alone had over 200 names in their area. UK police have arrested almost 4000 of those named,  and searched over 4283 homes, a more diligent response than that of any other world police force. There have been some 1500 person charged. That still leaves a considerable number on a list of ‘suspects’.  Philip Lyons, a senior commons Clerk was one of those arrested and charged. There has been repeated and apparently well informed speculation that Senior Ministers, some with close connections to Ireland appeared on the list. A the time of writing, the Sunday Times is believed to have a copy of this list, but to be unwilling to publish it. In the 19th of January edition of The Sunday Herald, Neil Mackay sensationally reported that senior members of Tony Blair’s government were being investigated for paedophilia and the “enjoyment” of child-sex pornography. That edition has now been removed from the archives. Duncan Campbell exposed the unfairness of the investigation – highlighting the fact that many thousands of the names, whilst genuine people, had had their card details obtained by fraud, and they were not the people who had accessed the illegal sites. Some 31 people are believed to have committed suicide as a result of being named  – often by very senior Police Officers, in this operation. There has been considerable disquiet by many that Leicestershire Police saw fit to apply to the court in Portugal not to reveal the names of suspected British paedophiles believed to be living or at least visiting Portugal, during the investigation of the McCann case. There has been further disquiet at the involvement of senior politicians, including Gordon Brown, in the case, and in the appointment of a government media spokesman to act as general factotum to the couple, a position he still holds to this day some 2 years later, although it is unclear who pays his salary now.

Jim Bates ‘who is regarded in many ways to be the founding father of computer forensics in this country’ [2009] EWHC 942 (Admin) was the defence expert witness who ultimately exposed the shoddy nature of the British end of Operation Ore, by examining the logs of the US based web site, and showing that many thousands of the names on the UK list were there as a result of proven fraud. His computers were seized three days before he was due to appear as a defence witness in the trial of Graeme Harris. Since Graeme Harris was deprived of the use of his ‘expert witness’ by the actions of Avon and Somerset police in illegally searching Bates’ house and removing hard drives – which contained material integral to Graeme Harris’s case, and which, note,  were obtained under Police supervision at the headquarters of the Avon and Somerset High Tech Unit, (not from some late night ‘surfing’ expedition!), there would appear to be at least a question mark over the validity of Graeme Harris’s trial. A matter which I am sure his defence team are looking into following the Judicial Review of the Bates case. Following the Judicial Review of Jim Bates’ case, Colin Port declared that he was prepared to defy the High Court and not hand property back to Mr Bates as directed.

The news from Ireland concerning the 2,000 children accepted as being sexually and physically abused is desperately sad; it is an emotive subject and one that many would prefer to avoid – all the more reason for absolute transparency as to the background of those involved in the fight against child abuse, and for a total adherence to the rule of law, to remove any suspicion that anyone is above the law, or indeed, below the radar of the law.

The privatisation of ACPO and indeed of its sub division CEOP has caused additional disquiet, I note also speculation regarding the freedom of information request which disclosed that £90,000 of public money was paid by Chief Constable Colin Port to lawyers Carter Ruck in an attempt to stop Bristol’s TV and Radio stations reporting on the IBM/Southwest One contract in which he and his wife had a direct interest. His wife Sue Barnes has been paid £200,000 in salary and fees alone as part of the deal. This followed BBC Crime Correspondent Steve Brodie’s reporting of allegations of corruption which were made by Ian Liddell-Grainger MP in the House of Commons under parliamentary privilege.

We mustn’t allow the present level of interest in the misdeeds of our rampant executive to blind us to equally serious events in other areas, unreported as they are by a national media which maintained a discreet silence on the level of corruption in our Houses Of Parliament until Damian McBride was removed from a position of power over them – thanks to blogger Guido Fawkes.

There be ‘Ore’ in them thar Irish Hills. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

More from the McCann’s – the family that craves privacy from the media, and finds themselves unable to return to Portugal for the Police reconstruction – this is the reconstruction that they ‘approved’ of – as made by themselves and supervised by their media representative.

The trial by internet continues……

The McCann Documentary. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

In May 2007, along with several thousand other people, I was invited to join in the search for young Madeleine McCann.

The past two years has been an extraordinary journey, largely conducted on-line, with the occasional physical foray to Prai da Luz. I have learnt a great deal, of human beings, and human responses, to extraordinary situations.

I have learnt nothing of the fate of young Madeleine.

There are as many speculative theories as there are communities engaged in debating them. Passions are intense, and oft times vitriolic.

It has become the ‘Darwinian’ debate of our times. Those who engage in it risk ridicule, social exclusion, and worse. Daring to challenge orthodox social beliefs can be a lonely occupation, and there are behemoth social beliefs aplenty in the McCann debate. It is a proxy war for many things that we are scared to debate openly.

Are foreigners trustworthy? Should Britain pull up the drawbridge and leave the EU? You think that has nothing to do with the MCann’s? Try suggesting that the Portuguese Police are a professional force and should be left  to conduct their investigation in peace, and you will soon find yourself submerged in in a deluge of xenophobic comment regarding sardine munching wine swilling incompetent foreigners who should leave it to the British police. We fear the level of immigration in the UK, it is considered impolite to refer to foreigners in our midst – yet perfectly acceptable to hold the most outrageous views on ‘foreigners’ beyond our shores. We use the McCann’s to verbalise our fears.

Is the state too powerful? Should government interfere less in our lives? You think that question has nothing to do with the McCann’s? Try discussing the media coverage of the McCannn case. You will soon hear verbalised the fears of media manipulation, the conspiracy theories to ‘hide the truth’, the involvement of government media manipulators. We use the McCann’s to verbalise our fears.

Should the government or the judiciary hold the power of life or death over us by withholding medical treatment from us? You think that question has nothing to do with the McCann’s?  Try bringing up the theories of the Portuguese Police that Madeleine died in that apartment, you will soon be told that they are Doctors, and thus could not possibly do anything to harm their children, or by implication, anyone else. We need to believe that Doctors cannot be harbingers of harm, despite the evidence of Dr Shipman, or perhaps because of it. We use the McCann’s to verbalise our fears.

You believe that money is a goal in itself to be ruthlessly pursued  or a community good that should be shared? I can tell you where you stand by your response to the controversial ‘fund’ set up in her name, whether that state organ the Leicestershire Police should be encouraging people onto a web site selling goods to swell the fund, or whether you believe in the name of charity that we should all contribute something to ‘help find that little girl’.

You think the class war is over, that equality has been successfully implanted in the UK? Try commenting on the fact that their obvious negligence in leaving their children unattended in unfamiliar surroundings should be investigated, you will be embroiled in competing arguments ranging from the defensive media articles – ‘we have all done it’ to ‘they’d be locked up by now if they came from a council house estate’. We all know in our hearts that the ‘class war’ is far from over, we carry in our DNA a secret set of codes to help us portray where we, and other,  stand in that hierarchy; your views on the McCann’s ‘negligence’ pigeon hole you as neatly as anything else.

You believe that free speech is one of the basic tenets of the British ‘democracy’?  Be sure to establish that you are addressing a like minded audience – for if you are not, you will find yourself howled down by raucous cries of ‘pitchforker’, ‘witch burner’, ‘fascist’. If you voice the wrong opinion in an internet forum, you may well find that others will devote their lives to finding out ‘who’ you are, ‘where’ you are, and publicising those facts so that you can be hounded into silence. If you voice the wrong opinion in print, you may well find yourself on the receiving end of a letter from Mssrs. Carter-Ruck. The McCann’s have become the front line in the battle to ensure/suppress free speech.

So what of Madeleine on this the second anniversary of her disappearance? of her physical well being or presence, we know nothing, but she is with us in spirit, for the ‘defective’ investigation into her fate, or the ‘defective’ response of her parents, both before and after the night of 3rd May, has become a metaphor for the many ills in our society that we fear to face.

Madeleine is the name of political debate today.

Watching the Defectives. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

There has long been speculation regarding the high level of support the McCanns received from within the government when their daughter Madeleine disappeared. It has been defended as ‘normal government support’ for a family in distress – but was it government support or Labour Party support?

The recent revelations of a high level ‘dirty tricks campaign’ within Downing Street has thrown new focus on the connections between government press officers and  campaigns to ‘pervert the truth’ and implant false perceptions in the public domain.

One of the most discussed facets of the McCann saga has been the appointment of Clarence Mitchell, previously head of the government media monitoring unit, to act as family spokesman and general factotum of the McCann family.

Clarence Mitchell would certainly have worked closely with Damian McBride, the now disgraced political advisor revealed to be the author of scurilous rumours regarding the opposition Conservative Party.

 A Plymouth web site has uncovered an intreiguing coincidence potentially linking the Downing Street ‘dirty tricks department’ and the McCann saga.

On the same day that McBride was sending his ill fated e-mails to Derek Draper, many miles away, another smear campaign was underway. Plymouth Labour Councillor Bill Stevens was writing on Draper’s Labourlist  web site attempting to smear the reputation of Conservative Councillor Steve Rickets, by linking him to an incident which the McCann’s reportedly found ‘very distressing’.

Councillor Bill Stevens, who speaks for Labour on Governance issues, tells us that “Plymouth Councillor Steven Ricketts is closely linked to the main perpetrators”

The article has been withdrawn today, but excerpts from it can be seen here. 

Was the appearence of that story orchestrated by Damien McBride?

The entire affair is beginning to resemble the film popular in the nineties – ‘Six Degrees of Separation’.

Lord Mandelson, close friend of Derek Draper, web master to Labourlist, close friend of Damian McBride, head of government ‘dirty tricks department’, colleague of Clarence Mitchell, purveyor of the McCann version of events, to Gerry McCann, COMARE colleague of John McCann, brother to the Labour Prime Minister, supporter of the McCann’s search for Madeleine in Morocco, holiday resort of Lord Mandelson, can I stop now?  Would you care to continue playing this game on your own whilst I travel back to France?

McBride, McCann, McSpin and McSmear is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Gonçalo Amaral’s Documentary is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Ben Goldacre drew my attention to several articles on the responsibility the media must take for increasing aberrant behaviour by their very reporting of it. He was talking in particular of suicide, following the death of Sylvia Platt’s son.

Details matter, as ever. Overdoses increased by 17% in the week after a prominent overdose on Casualty (watched by 22% of the population at the time), and paracetamol overdoses went up by more than others. In 1998 the Hong Kong media reported heavily on a case of carbon monoxide poisoning by a very specific method, using a charcoal burner. In the 10 months preceding the reports, there had been no such suicides. In November there were 3; then in December there were 10; and over the next year there were 40.

The copy-cat effect of media reporting has been adequately demonstrated in the case of Shannon Mathews. Karen Mathews is believed to have been influenced, not only by the McCann family saga, but also by the Channel 4 series Shameless depicting a dysfunctional family who staged the fake kidnap of the youngest son in an attempt to obtain a £500,000 ransom, which was  screened in the month before Shannon vanished.

This week it has been announced that the McCanns and Chanel 4 will join forces to produce, not a genuine work of fiction, which could be damaging enough, but a work purporting to be fact – a documentary – detailing the method by which they allege their daughter was abducted from Portugal.

This is wrong on several levels.

All commercial media has one main objective : to raise revenue through advertising.  The broadcast media rely on on audience numbers which are difficult to assess. So, programmes are broadcast which are more likely to ensure a large audience. The media themselves advertise forthcoming programmes to ensure large audiences. This enables them to charge higher advertising rates during and close to the relevant programme.

That is their ‘private interest’ – however, there is a larger ‘public interest’ which should be taken into account. The public interest is not best served by detailed examination of how a crime which could result in great distress to a young child ‘could be’ committed.

If, and hopefully when, the true facts of the crime are known, then there is an argument in favour of responsible reporting of the resulting court case;  lurid speculation of the facts ‘as believed’ by the last people to see Madeleine McCann alive fulfill none of these criteria.

The Portuguese Police made available many opportunities for a reconstruction of the crime to take place last year, with the genuine parties invited to take part. Those people, including the parents, declined to take part, for reasons best known to themselves. That they are now prepared, for the reported sum of £10,000, to take part in a work of fiction by a commercial television company made in order to raise the advertising revenue of Chanel 4, is woefully irresponsible and misguided on the part of Chanel 4. It is difficult to see how this programme will comply with section 5 of the Ofcom code of Practice and I suspect can only lead to further demands for increased control over their output.

It has been reported that the young girl being used to portray Madeleine McCann is the daughter of Father Hubbard, the Anglican Priest closely involved in the McCann saga. Given that there is no evidence, beyond the suspicion of one member of the McCann’s party that she ‘may’ have seen something that ‘could’ have been a young child being carried home, which ‘may’ have been something more suspicious, it is difficult to justify the inclusion of this young girl in the filming. A young actress could have been used, but to sanction the inclusion of a young girl to illustrate the way in which someone she was closely associated with disappeared, never to be seen again, borders on the horrific. Little surprise that she was reportedly so upset during the filming that filming had to be stopped to console her. Is Chanel 4 not aware of section 1.27 of the Ofcom code?

In case Chanel 4 have lost their copy of the code, I reproduce the most salient section here.

3.1 Material likely to encourage or incite the commission of crime or to lead to disorder must not be included in television or radio services.

3.2 Descriptions or demonstrations of criminal techniques which contain essential details which could enable the commission of crime must not be broadcast unless editorially justified.

There is adequate evidence that this sort of programme can incite similar crimes. Given that there was sufficient opportunity to carry out a reconstrcution of this crime last year under the controlled and essentially ‘private’ conditions by the Portuguese Police, there is no editorial justification for making this programme in the manner suggested.

Responsible Reportage, Myths and Mythology. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

The victim stance is a powerful one. The victim is always morally right, neither responsible nor accountable, and forever entitled to sympathy.

In our current secular, celebrity driven culture, the ‘victim’ is not only the person who was stabbed, raped, murdered, but the apparently perpetually grieving, those who can never let go, those who have apparently sold their own integrity in order to be available a provide an outraged quote whenever a newspaper invents a scandal, and whose ‘wise words’ and ‘expertise’ are elevated over the words of more traditionally trained experts.

The rhetoric of victimhood allows them to cast themselves without qualification as victims, or as saviours of victims, while dramatising their chosen opponents as demonic without qualification.

The concepts of ‘rights’ and ‘victims’ are often closely related. Fighting for a ‘right’ infers that a right was denied. Fighting for a right all too often means claiming a victim status.

The badge of victimhood must be ‘earned’ by having something bad actually happen to you.

We have become a nation of victims, where everyone is leapfrogging over each other, publicly competing for the status of victim, and where everyone is defined as some sort of survivor.

Without a victim the entire human rights culture collapses.

In a paper published in January , the Church voiced concern over how the Human Rights legislation is being interpreted and claim that it has been used by secularists to advance a liberal agenda.

Princess Diana is the undoubted apex of the hierarchy of victimhood.  Journalists and Politicians severally and together, used her unwise public explorations of her bulimia, and the traumas of life within the Royal Family, to pursue a campaign of Republicanism.

Similarly, Doreen Lawrence, whose grief and anger over the death of her son has elevated her to the position where she is invited to sit on the dais alongside Jack Straw, at  a conference on race relations and – on behalf of all ‘oppressed black people’ - confidently pronounce of the police that the ‘rank and file are still racist’ and command the headlines, muffling the voices of other experts.

The parents of Madeleine McCann have become the experts on child abduction, and child safety, travelling the globe,  journalists and politicians alike rushing to approve their sentiments on the art of parenting, and who they think, other than themselves, was responsible for the loss of their child.

The parents of Leah Betts who died of an ecstasy overdose in 1995 are now credited with the expertise to pronounce that publication of the photographs of Rachel Whitear’s death from a heroin overdose ‘would save lives’ – a claim which is elevated in headlines over the voice of industry expert Roger Howard, who questioned the use of the horrific images: ‘There is little evidence that such shock tactics actually work in changing behaviour’.

The widow of murdered headteacher Philip Lawrence is called in to give us the benefit of her views on the wisdom of current attempts to curtail the growth of knife crime.  Bringing knife arches into schools would lead to the ‘criminalisation’ of young people, she said; and there was apparently no need to enquire further from anybody who might have spent years of their professional life studying the subject.

Who can challenge the voice of the professional victim?

Stephen Taylor, the father of murdered Damilola Taylor, was hauled out of retirement to pronounce on the morals of Kate Perry. ‘This woman’s behaviour is unacceptable,’ – and her mental health – ‘ she must be out of her mind to pose for a picture like this. She has lost all integrity by this.’

The one thing that all these people have in common is that they were once related to someone who became a victim, and yet we now hear their voices daily as experts in their field.

Victimhood has become the ultimate qualification for pontificating and advising on national crises and the nation’s morals.

‘Rent a quote’ and the professional mourners. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Gerry MCann this afternoon told MPs at the Select Committee on Press Standards, Privacy and Libel that he had wanted an international campaign to help find Madeline, but that she had been treated ‘as a commodity’ by the press. Clarence Mitchell who was also appearing in front of the Committee said that there were ‘profits to be made’. In both cases they were referring to the actions of the press, they made no reference to the on line activities of the ‘Madeline Fund’ web site that was selling wrist bands and other, some surprisingly tacky, items on behalf of the Madeline Fund. Despite several in depth questions from MPs, there was no substantive evidence that the press had ‘made a profit’ out of Madeline; Clarence Mitchell vouchsafed the anecdotal evidence from ‘on the ground’ that an extra 40,000 copies day of one paper could be attributed to the ‘Madeline effect’, but even Adam Tudor of Carter-Ruck was unable to verify that the claim that ‘profits were made’ was any more than a ‘hunch’ on the part of the parties involved. Certainly profits were lost when the Daily Express elected to settle the case with the McCann’s for articles which in Carter-Ruck’s opinion were defamatory and would have been proved to be so in court. Surprisingly, the Committee were under the impression that these claims had been tested in court, perhaps because of the open statement read out by Justice Eadey as part of the agreed settlement, which has been quoted oft times as evidence that there was ‘no truth’ in the articles published by that paper, rather than that the paper had no means of proving whether the statements were true or not.
There was a similar degree of confusion surrounding the issue of whether the Press Complaints Committee (PCC) was still the body best suited to handling complaints that the press were overstepping the bounds of decency. Had the McCann’s complained to the PCC? ‘Yes’, ‘No’, and ‘sort of’, seems to best sum up the Mr McCann’ response. He had an ‘informal conversation’ with the Chairman, Sir Christopher Meyer, from which he had ‘got the impression’ that the PCC was not going to be most helpful ‘route’. He had consulted Carter-Ruck, who, in a ‘short conversation’ shared his view that the PCC could be seen as ‘overly media friendly’, whilst no doubt being scrupulously careful not to encourage a potential client to litigation if there was a a less caustic way of dealing with the situation. Carter-Ruck was of the opinion that if the PCC route had been followed you could ‘probably have felt the sigh of relief up and down Fleet Street’ and that the message would have been that ‘Kate and Gerry’ had no appetite to ‘see it through’.
There were replies that appeared strangely stilted and formulaic, with the lack of passion that has been a hallmark of this case; a suggestion in the press that Madeleine was dead received the response from Gerry McCann that there was no evidence to ‘suggest that she had been seriously harmed’ – an answer that subtly missed the point; but pressing the point regarding the Portuguese allegations that she might have died accidentally and not ‘been harmed’ by anybody was never the intention of this Committee, no doubt to the disappointment of many.
Other quite pertinent questions that were put to the trio – did they have evidence that the ‘media had been paying for information’ which only the Police had in Portugal – Clarence Mitchell could ‘not prove so’, but you could ‘make assumptions’; just as he would not wish to actually allege that ‘some journalists were fueled by alcohol’, but then again ‘they did congregate in a bar’………damning innuendo, but hardly serious evidence to a Select Committee, and in vivid contrast to the measured evidence given by Max Mosley in the morning.
Robert Murat who unaccountably was not called to give evidence, did get one brief mention by Paul Donnelly MP, an inclusion in the description of the maelstrom of press attention that was given to the ‘Three Arguidos’; he deserved better, for he never had a full time press spokesman to shield him from the full onslaught of the press pack.
Undoubtedly the McCann’s were happy to make themselves available to the press when the coverage suited them, and resented it when the coverage was not so favourable, but this is not a reason to apply greater regulation to the press. Undoubtedly the presence of Carter-Ruck on their team has resulted in greater control over what is printed – Adam Tudor said that ‘how much will it cost’ is the first factor for any editor now – but nor should that be a factor in disbanding the PCC.
Curiously, if one listened carefully, you would have heard that the PCC gave evidence that they contacted the McCann’s in Portugal as soon as May 5th to offer their help and support; Gerry McCann’s grudging response that ‘if they did’, it was ‘lost’ in the general confusion, only served to deepen the impression that the PCC were damned from the beginning – and yet Clarence Mitchell conceded that ‘six months’ after the McCann’s returned to England an approach to the PCC resulted in journalists ceasing to doorstep them at their home in Rothley. So the PCC can be effective? We must wait to see the results of the Committee’s deliberations, but it does not look hopeful so far.
Witnesses to a Select Committee do have the opportunity to correct any evidence they have given, and until all corrections are collated we must be content with the impression that the oral evidence has given us today.

An international campaign…… is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Just off the coast of Free Speech, across the Bay of Good Intentions, lie the Isles of Enforced Government Regulations.
These are dangerous waters for the Blogger vessels. One false move and they could find themselves beached on the craggy rocks of new government legislation. Nor is it just these submerged rocks they must navigate; there are Pirates abroad, ready and willing to throw their grappling irons aboard and steer us into the treacherous currents of Evolving Libel Law. Many a blogger has known an apparently innocent poster to arrive, who then leaves an obscene, or libelous post on his blog, which even though quickly removed, proves to have been copied and pasted onto dozens of spurious ‘spoof’ blogs as evidence of the need to close down the original Blog.

John Whittingdale MP is the nearest thing we have to a Coastguard. He is currently chairing the Select Committee on Press Standards, Privacy and Libel, although may not be as well disposed towards the free speech of Bloggers as we might wish, he is on record as saying:

“ISPs made a rod for their own back when they attempted to filtering out child pornography. If they’re prepared to block this material, then they could block other illegal content. And if they could, then they should. The Government has had enough, this is why it’s in talks about legislation.”

The Committee has so far been hearing evidence from lawyers on both sides of the media libel divide. Those who predominantly act for Claimants have robustly defended their use of Conditional Fee Agreements (CFAs) . CFAs were introduced as part of Lord Woolf’s ‘Access to Justice’ reforms, to provide a means of funding legal action for defendants in areas where Legal Aid was not available. The consensus of opinion at the time was that Libel Law had become the preserve of the very rich, and its protection was not available to those of more slender means. However, CFAs are not Means Tested, thus we hear the Chairman of the Media Lawyers Association telling us:

Two of the organisations that are members of the Media Lawyers Association, Trinity Mirror and News International, are being sued; it is a privacy action by Ashley Cole; he is on a CFA; his lawyer is charging £575 an hour with no doubt 100% uplift; he has three counsel; he has ATE insurance. Roman Polanski, the film director, he sued in libel – and that might be a topic you will come onto, libel tourism – but he never actually came to this country to prosecute the action, but Mr Polanski sued in libel; Mr Mathieson’s firm was acting for the defendants; he was on a CFA. Cherie Booth was another person who has taken advantage. I believe Sharon Stone sued using CFA.

These are scarcely the sort of people you may have had in mind as being ‘unable to access justice’ for financial reasons; it seems completely wrong that a system that was introduced for people who did not have funds should be exploited by rich people and their lawyers.

The costs incurred under CFAs are having a direct effect on free speech, the quoted figures of around £1300 an hour are not under the control of the claimant who may be entirely unaware of how expensive his claim is proving. It means that regional and national newspapers are disinclined to defend a defamation claim; not because they have poor journalists, nor because the story was defamatory, but simply because the longer the time before admitting their ‘guilt’ and apologising, the more exorbitant the figures, not necessarily to the defendant, but to the lawyers – and this in a time of decreasing newspaper sales and a declining market. ‘Apologies’ and ‘Out of Court Settlements’ are more likely to represent economic reality than any representation of where the truth lies.

The conversation concerning control of the Internet has centred round the morally unassailable parameters of the protection of children. It is parents who should be responsible for protecting their children, not governments. If we allow the government to legislate under this guise and take responsibility for protecting our children, we will open the door to them to dictate and control what adults discuss and debate, from Jacqui Smith’s second home allowance to the rights and wrongs of whether it really was like ‘dining at the bottom of your garden’ when the McCann’s left their children alone in a strange hotel room.

Gerry McCann will be giving evidence this afternoon under the comforting umbrella of ‘absolute privilege’, which in practical terms means that witnesses are immune from civil or criminal proceedings founded upon that evidence; nor can their evidence be relied upon in civil or criminal proceedings against any other person. It will be a matter of intense interest to see the arguments in favour and against shielding parental shortcomings from the gaze of public attention.

Section 12 of the Human Rights Act was designed to provide a balance between Article 8 – respect for family life, and Article 10 – freedom of expression. Its current interpretation by the judiciary, and the lack of control over CFAs have led many to believe that free speech has never been in greater danger; Bloggers are in the front line of the defence of free speech, we must sail these uncharted seas with care.

Uncharted waters……. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Ashley Cole needs his right to privacy and threatens the Sun newspaper just before being arrested for using abusive language!
The philandering husband of Girls Aloud singer Cheryl Cole has threatened to sue the Sun newspaper for invasion of his privacy if they dare to print photographs of him and the ‘classy’ woman’ he was talking to at a South Kensington establishment.
Cole’s ‘minders’ snatched the Sun photographer’s camera.
The Sun did not print the photographs. Maybe they had already been deleted. The Sun described the ‘beautiful blonde’ woman and the blue outfit she was wearing – including her necklace and four bracelets.
It is alleged that some degree of intimacy was being shared in a cordoned-off exclusive area. Indeed one eye-witness account reveals that the classy beautiful blonde even tilted her head at a specific 90 degrees. We are told that she also spoke directly into Cole’s ear.
Despised by most football fans, Ashley Cole is currently earning in excess of 82K per week. This man has a responsibility to his football team, his few fans and his wife – who has recently been suffering from altitude sickness whilst trying to raise money for Comic Relief.
How many more of these footballers and other so-called celebrities are to dictate what the Press are allowed to print? The drive for new privacy and libel laws will leave the Sun and all other red-tops without photographs and little else to write about.
We should be mindful of Gerry Adams speaking on behalf of the IRA on the BBC. We could see him on the screen but a voice-over was speaking his words.
Would the mass media prefer to go back down this route again? If they do not act right now – they will not have the powers to act – even if they want to.

British Slag and the Decline of Cole. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Last night Robert Murat, one of the original three arguidos, spoke in a Cambridge University debate and thus fired the first salvo in the sequel to the McCann version of ‘Survivor’.

‘Survivor’ was a ‘reality’ TV show invented in the early 90′s, where contestants are isolated in the wilderness and compete for cash and other prizes. The show used a progressive elimination, allowing the contestants to vote off a tribe member, until only one final contestant remained and won the title of "Sole Survivor". Viewer participation was encouraged,  armbands sold identifying which tribe you supported, and web sites set up to allow viewers to exchange messages of support for ‘their’ tribe.

It was an incredibly popular format, locking into what has been termed the ‘political unconscious’ of reality Television. Apparently bored with previously popular ‘gladiator’ sports such as football, TV viewers, in particular in the UK, have remained glued to their screen as generic versions were spawned, each outdoing each other with the ‘ooh’ ‘ahh’ factor.

The sad disappearance of little Madeleine McCann was to spawn a tabloid version; whether this was by design or default, remains to be seen. We now have a sequel to that tabloid version, as the contestants slug it out over the issue of whether they should have been publicly identified as contestants.

Murat was but the first in a series of speakers – Clarence Mitchell the government spin meister turned family spokesman is to address the Oxford Union tonight; the undoubted star turn, Gerry McCann, already heavily ‘trailered’ on the Internet, is to give evidence to the Select Committee on Privacy and Libel law next Tuesday.

Murat’s lawyer, Louis Charalambous, said last night: "Mr Murat accepted Cambridge Union Society’s invitation to propose the motion as it represented the most favourable forum within which he could personally and once and for all, set the record straight about his experience at the hands of the British tabloids.

"He has chosen this as his sole and only opportunity to share these experiences and the plight of victims of the press pack.”

A statement which begs the question: why is Murat not addressing the Select Committee – was he not invited to? Was he prevented from doing so?

Murat, of the three arguidos, surely has most to say about the effect of invasion of privacy by the press. Without wishing to get into a debate regarding who has suffered the most abuse and libel in this sad reality show, the parents of Madeleine McCann were made arguidos to allow them to answer questions which could not have been put to them otherwise; both as the parents of a missing child, and the last people known to have been in her presence, they must surely accept that this was a right and proper action on the part of the police: they would have been similarly questioned by the police in their home country.

Robert Murat, on the other hand, took the opportunity last night to blame a specific unnamed journalist, who was "so anxious, it appeared, to break a story that she literally created her own". He went on to say:

"To my personal cost, I now know what the maxim ‘never let the truth get in the way of a good story’ really means," he said.

"Over a period of many months, day after day, a torrent of outlandish, untrue, and deeply hurtful allegations about me were systematically splashed across the pages of British newspapers.

"I was one day said to be a sexual predator, another day a kidnapper; the tabloids reported apparently that I had been outside the McCann flat on the night Madeleine went missing, with her DNA apparently found in my home.

"They even came up with a story that I had a secret chamber under the floor of the house. Fairytales. Every single one of them, as the police themselves concluded."

The McCann’s courted publicity, it was thrust upon Murat. In both cases that publicity has turned sour, and claims of defamation have been settled out of court by numerous newspapers, unable or unwilling to bear the cost of proving their allegations – copied from the Portuguese press in many cases – to be true.

We do not yet know, may never know, whether any, all, or none, of the three original arguidos, played any part in Madeleine’s disappearance.

We do know, however, that the McCann’s both courted the original publicity, for entirely laudable reasons, and, as the parents, had every reason to find their privacy invaded by the press. Robert Murat, until evidence shows to the contrary, had no reason to find his privacy and that of his family, so invaded.

Which begs the question yet again – why is Gerry McCann giving evidence to the Select Committee and not Robert Murat?

Treachery and Tribal Warfare. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

The Culture Media and Sport Select Committee is conducting an inquiry into media privacy at the moment. Spies tell me that next Tuesday Gerry McCann will give oral evidence to the Committee in the afternoon.

That will be even more interesting than Robert Murat speaking in the debate at Cambridge university tonight.

Hat tip to Ian Dale

Gerry McCann to give evidence. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

The Government has said today that it will take measures to limit costs in libel cases “unless compelling arguments emerge against doing so”.

When Lord Woolf recommended the Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA) as a way to create a system where the courts were open to all regardless of means, he did so with the genuine and laudable intent of granting access to justice for plaintiffs denied recourse to legal aid.

Nowhere was the CFA taken up more avidly than in defamation claims. There is now genuine concern that the effect of CFAs in defamation proceedings is undermining freedom of speech, particularly in the media.

Libel costs for news organisations have escalated in recent years because of the huge costs of settling cases brought under no win, no fee rules. The Conditional Fee Agreements allow claimants to pay nothing up front on the understanding that their lawyers can double their money if they win. With media lawyers charging up to £700 an hour, £1400 per hour for a ‘winning’ lawyer, costs settlements often hugely outweigh any damages paid.

Combined with the burden of proof resting on the defendant, the system has ensured that newspaper editors have a choice – only print those stories which are provided by the PR guru’s behind various celebrities, or send your journalist out to investigate hard stories and risk, as the Guardian did, a bill from Carter-Ruck for £803,000 for a relatively minor libel which had resulted in a payout of ‘a few thousand’ to the organisation libelled. This seriously undermines the ability, and appetite,  of journalists to investigate difficult issues.

Last year, the Mail on Sunday paid £5,000 in damages to MP Martyn Jones after accusing him of swearing at a Commons official – but paid out £520,000 in libel fees to the plaintiffs legal team.

Speaking at the Press Gazette Media Law Conference earlier this month, lawyer Julian Pike revealed that the cost risk to a publisher of defending a major libel case at trial was now £2.4 million. Little wonder that newspapers are so quick to settle ‘out of court’ for sums of money which may seem impressive, but are but a drop in the ocean compared to the lawyers bill lurking behind them.

The parents of Madeleine McCann were successful litigants this summer, as were their friends, and Murat the third arguido. A high proportion of the stories in the British press that they claimed had libelled them originated in the Portuguese press and had been picked up by news starved journalists working for the British press. However, reprinting something which has appeared in another publication is merely ‘repeating the libel’ and under British law, the newspapers concerned had a choice between proving the truth of the Portuguese allegations, obviously an impossibility since the PJ themselves could not produce sufficient evidence to mount a prosecution, or settling out of court quickly to minimise the outlandish bills which were heading towards them from the litigants high powered legal team.

Such settlements remain an ‘economic reality’ rather than a reflection of where the truth may or may not lie.

The Ministry of Justice has today issued a consultation paper “Controlling costs in defamation proceedings”.  The paper estimates that defamation proceedings in England and Wales cost a total of around £15m a year, in legal fees alone. In these straightened times, that is a lot of good journalism that could be paid for – out of 50 major libel or privacy actions launched in the last six months, the Press Gazette could find only two which had been successfully defended – meaning quite simply, that the publishers got to pick up the lawyer’s bill in all the other cases.

Double or quits is ‘crap’………. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Metodo3 the infamous Spanish detective agency involved in searching for Madeleine McCann was today accused by the Spanish Attorney General’s Office of squirreling other people’s nuts away for a rainy day.

The ‘crack’ detective team – and who can forget that one of their director’s stands accused of importing crack cocaine stuffed in frozen prawns, continues to amuse us with its antics.

According to the Attorney General’s Office note, the Catalan government, in recent years, have ordered and paid for a significant number of reports that seem irrelevant, citing, for example, a “survey into the socio-economy of a hazelnut farm” ordered from the detective agency for the modest (???)sum of 30,000  euros. The resulting survey, according to El Confidencial was copied word for word from the Internet………! Wherever could they have got the idea for this ‘dodgy dossier’ from.

Metodo 3 has already been linked to other scandals connected to the political and the financial world, and, recently, their work in investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, where one of the senior employees, Antonio Jimenez, was accused of having driven several British journalists to meet previously paid witnesses, who had allegedly seen Madeleine in Morocco. Jiminez was subsequently arrested for theft and cocaine trafficking.

The Attorney General’s Office say the total amounts involved in the misappropriation of funds and money laundering could be ‘colossal’.

Wire tapping, suitcases full of ‘cuddle-cats’ as they drive British journalists to meet paid informers, cocaine stuffed prawns, a Spanish debt collecting agency with no previous record of finding lost children, and now plain ‘nuts’ – how on earth did the McCann’s end up paying the hard earned pennies of widows and school children into the coffers of this agency……it was Edward Smethhurst legal co-ordinator of Brian Kennedy’s many companies, past and present, who recommended them was it not? Or perhaps Clarence Mitchell, ex-senior employee of the media monitoring unit belonging to our own ‘dodgy dossier’ government?

Surely not sheer chance?

Source: SOS Maddie

The McCann case – Nuts, whole hazelnuts…… is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Jessica de Grazia’s official report last summer on the Serious Fraud Office was mortifying, painting a picture of gross incompetence in an organisation designed to pierce the most sophisticated corporate frauds. 300 lawyers, accountants and investigators, presumed to be the finest available, and funded to the tune of £42 million last year, were revealed to be “paralysed by perceived cronyism, paranoia and a lack of firm leadership and direction”.

A financial investigator remarked: “The SFO has a system where the mediocre flourish.”

Just four days ago it was reported that the SFO was delaying the transmission of information to the United States about Bernard Madoff‘s London-based operation, to officials involved in wrapping up the defunct empire of the disgraced investment adviser, court records yesterday.

Two days ago they were involved in an unseemly exchange with the Portuguese authorities, from whom they had demanded sight of the Bank Accounts of José Sócrates, the Portuguese Prime MInister, in  connection with the ‘Freeport’ case – a request which was met with hollow laughter in Portugal, since the English Home Office had blocked requests for access to the credit card statements of Gerry McCann!

The ‘track record’ of the SFO has been embarrassing.

2003 – Andrew Regan acquitted of theft and bribery involving the Coop after six years and three trials. Estimated cost: £6.3m
1996 – The SFO’s pursuit of Kevin and Ian Maxwell on fraud charges ends in failure. Estimated cost: £20m-£30m
1994 – George Walker, the boxer turned businessman, cleared of all charges after 18-week trial. Estimated cost: £40m
1992 – Court of Appeal overturns SFO convictions of four directors of Blue Arrow describing the 12-month trial as a “costly disaster”. Estimated cost: £40m

This is reminiscent of the Quinquennial Review of The Public Trust Office, an organisation charged with controlling the finances of the most vulnerable people in the country – a similar catalogue of incompetence, inefficiency and demoralisation was uncovered there.

The two departments have one outstanding factor in common – a culture of excessive secrecy concerning their actual work output.

However there is a significant difference in the outcome of their reviews – staff in the old Public Trust Office would be astounded to learn of the redundancy pay offs  on offer at the SFO – up to £240,000 lump sum on top of a £22,000 pension. Some of the Public Trust Office staff counted themselves lucky to ‘hitch a lift downwards’ to a lowly clerks position in the Immigration Office.

How fortunate those SFO staff are to be made redundant in the midst of a recession presided over by a Labour government that is determined to reward the feckless, support the inadequate, and bleed the hard working to pay for it….

The Serial Farce Office……. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Steven Poole coined the phrase ‘Unspeak’ as a fitting title for his book describing the process by which certain key words can lay claim to the high moral ground in a contentious matter without having to justify the argument.

‘Unspeak’ should not be confused with George Orwell’s ‘newspeak’ or ‘doublespeak’ which effectively reversed the meaning of words, ‘unspeak’ is a deliberate attempt to to make the message ‘reality’.

Poole compares and contrasts ‘tax relief’ and ‘tax burden’, which covertly argue that lowered taxes automatically relieve and unburden everybody. Pro-choice distances its speakers from actually advocating abortion, while casting “adversaries as ‘anti-choice’; as interfering, patriarchal dictators.”

When governments speak of a surgical strike they convey the benevolent practice of medicine, ridding a target of its disease.Collateral damage redefines the death of innocents as injury. Smart weapons posit the opposite of dumb weapons that kill indiscriminately. Daisy cutter sanitizes the killing power of the daisy-cutter bomb. Weapons of mass destruction, which earlier referred to the horrific mechanized tools of warfare being stockpiled in the 1930s, now applies to biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons when possessed by ‘other’ regimes.

Poole writes, “But Unspeak does not say one thing while meaning another. It says one thing while really meaning that one thing,” and the confusion unspeak generates is almost always calculated and deliberate.

As the channel through which politicians, activists, and corporations market their words, reporters are usually the first recipients of new examples of unspeak. Monitoring how they say what they say is as important as reporting precisely what they say. As Poole notes, resisting unspeak isn’t quibbling about semantics. It’s attacking the “chain of reasoning at its base.”

In May 2007. the word ‘abduction’ was on everybody’s lips, in every newspaper headline, on every news bulletin.  What sea change has occurred, that now when discussing the McCann case, that emotive word ‘abduction’, with its implication that unspeakable acts which could not have been foreseen are  responsible, have gradually and insidiously been replaced by the media with the words ‘disappeared’ or  ’vanished”?

The recently published accounts for ‘The Madeleine Fund’, as it is colloquially known, contain these words from the Chairman, John McCann.

‘On 3rd May 2007, Madeleine McCann was abducted in Praia da Luz, Portugal’.

That word ‘abducted’ jumped out at me, and I realised what a very long time it had been since I saw that word used by the mainstream media in connection with this case.

‘Unspeak’ – the Journalist’s lexicon and ‘Abduction’. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Mr Clarence Mitchell said: ‘People will be able to see that every penny of the money they so generously donated has been spent properly in the hunt to find Madeleine.’

I would suggest, Mr Mitchell, that the publication by Companies House last night of the accounts for the private company (limited by guarantee) ‘Leaving No Stone Unturned’, often misleadingly referred to simply as ‘the fund’, a term more commonly applied to a Registered Charity, will have an entirely different effect.

Less than a third of the Audited monies have been spent on directly searching for Madeleine. ‘Search fees’ of £250,000 out of the ‘£2 million’ figure quoted in the Daily Mail’s banner headline is not  a figure that will impress the most numerically challenged reader, far less the army of ‘widows and orphans’ who raised this sum in order to ‘Help Find Madeleine’ as they were exhorted to do in a series of emotional appeals.

The remaining two thirds of the monies are accounted for under a series of headings that could be paraphrased as ‘protecting Madeleine’s (and by extension the McCann’s) image and reputation’  and ‘providing for the needs of those entitled to draw from the fund’ – the lawyers, the friends and family who act as Directors.

In 2007, The Liverpool Daily Post said

And with Mr McCann, the family’s main earner, on unpaid leave from his job as consultant cardiologist, part of the Fund has been used to meet their living costs.
Esther McVey, then acting as a Director of the fund, said “I haven’t got the exact figure but it is just under £300,000,”

The living expenses of a highly paid professional couple was hardly uppermost in the minds of those who scrapped together their pennies to ‘Help Find Madeleine’. Nor were legal expenses of just under £200,000 to ensure that Madeleine’s image and intellectual property rights remained under the control of the fund.

Web site costs of £37,071 is another figure which has left many aghast. Was the web site sued for libel? I cannot fathom any other reason why this figure should be so astronomical. The web site was set up by a  pupil of a family member – surely acting in an unpaid capacity, it is unthinkable that a relative should wish to profit from this sad saga. As each and every blogger who has written extensively on Madeleine knows, it costs peanuts in financial terms to set up and run a web site. The vast 3Arguidos web site which is accessed daily by thousands of members to keep up to date with the ‘McCann news’ quotes a figure of £1,597.44 as the ongoing costs to date of hosting a busy web site.

One of the most interesting figures is the £26,113 paid for ‘media monitoring’. Quite how this helps to search for Madeleine is hard to understand. Did someone suspect that Madeleine would put a small advert in an obscure classified column somewhere ‘Here I am, please release me’……. in which case monitoring for such an appearance is emphatically an example of Mr Mitchell’s ‘every penny [...] spent properly’. Though given Gordon Brown’s involvement in this matter, and that of his wife’s association with Julia Hobshawn’s ‘Media Monitoring’ company, the suspicion must remain that the monitoring was not for word from Madeleine herself, nor from anyone who preferred writing to a newspaper to the more efficacious method of dialling 999 as a means of transmitting news of her whereabouts, but that this item may indeed be for payment to the army of ‘posters’ who have appeared on every web site determinedly pushing the use of the word ‘Abduction’ in preference to ‘Missing’ or Vanished’ or ‘Lost’. Incidentally, should the £81,904 spent on ‘posters’ be added to this section or to the merchandising and and campaigning section? Posters is a misleading term. If that is so, it has been a wasted £26,000 for I can think of no ‘News outlet’ that is not under the control of the McCann’s that still uses the word ‘Abduction’. Can you?

We must remember that these are the accounts for an initial  ten month period – further accounts will reflect the massive libel payouts made last year and further donations.

The law should be changed so that in future, a truly independent body oversees any donations made in respect of a sick or missing child. Not merely the Charity Commission overseeing the accounts (although that would have been a welcome and advantageous intervention in this case), but a truly independent body overseeing what the donations are spent on. Two European police forces were involved in the search for Madeleine, there was no initial reason for the family to have access to these vast sums. Where a child receives compensation as a result of personal injuries, the money is never handed to the parents, it is held by the High Court and expenditure scrutinised at every stage – before and after it is spent. The law should be changed to encompass situations such as this, where well meaning and hard working families donate money to aid any child in difficulties.

It should not be spent at the discretion of a family whose ‘common sense’ is at the mercy of their emotions.

A ‘Clarri-fied’ parallel universe. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Karen Mathews, the mother of Shannon Matthews is due to be sentenced for kidnapping her own daughter at Leeds Crown Court, alongside her former partner’s uncle, Michael Donovan, 40.

It was revealed that Donovan kept her imprisoned as part of a plan he and Matthews hatched to claim a £50,000 reward offered by a national newspaper.

Police believe the pair may have been influenced by the coverage of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance, which was a high-profile news story in the months before Shannon went missing.

The Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport has recently requested written submissions for an Inquiry into ‘Press Standards, Privacy and Libel’. The inquiry was commissioned in the wake of concerns regarding the reportage of both the McCann case and the Max Mosley case.

The written submissions are being perused as we write. There is no date yet for oral submissions, but we shall keep you informed as soon as there is.

The McCann influence. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

The news wires from Portugal are hissing and humming this morning as they transmit the latest saga from Faro.

The Faro court was hearing the case of the alleged assaults by five PJ inspectors of Leonor Cipriano who alleges torture during her interrogation.

Three inspectors stand accused of the crime of torture, one stands accused of the crime of false testimony and failure to denounce and a fifth one stands accused of the crime of document forgery.

The court room was in disarray when Marcos Aragão Correia, the lawyer of Leonor Cipriano was forced by the judge to leave the court room after it was revealed that he had been suspended by the Portuguese Bar.

Correia was notified this morning by a member of the Algarve District Council of his suspension, Hélder de Sousa, who did not specify the precise reason for the disciplinary action by the ethics committee. RTM, the Portuguese radio station is reporting that this is a six month suspension and originates from complaints laid by clients of Correia based in Madeira.

Correia’s suspension from this high profile Faro court case follows his admission to Portuguese newspapers that he ‘collaborated with Metodo 3,the McCann’s private detectives’ and received money ‘for expenses’ and intreiguingly hot on the heels of Gerry McCann’s mysterious visit to Faro.

Leonora Cipriano has not had a great deal of success with her legal representation, her first lawyer was allegedly involved in the drug trade, now his replacement has been suspended for unethical behaviour. The case continues and she is now represented by a ‘duty solicitor’.

You hum it, I’ll write it…………… is a post from: Anna Raccoon