Election (not) special

Limpdims are taking a drubbing, mainly oop north in places like Newcastle, Hull and Sheffield, delivering their worse worst election results since the 1980s, according to the hand wavers. Some idiots are writing that Nick Clegg suffered a "massive blow to his authority". What authority? The man needs a £300,000 armoured car and a police escort to keep him safe when he goes to the toilet, and a political advisor to tell him where to point it.

Some other commentators are calling the fate of the limpdims a "massacre". Unfortunately, at this stage, it is only figurative. Give it time. But with all the brains and imagination of a sack of dried sheep-poo, Nicky is saying: "We have taken a real knock and we need to learn the lessons". So we're into "Lessons learned"? Give me strength. The only lesson here, mate, is you're political history.

The limpdims should never have got any votes up in the north anyway, except that a lot of trusting people thought corrupt, slightly less inefficient limpdims would make a change from corrupt inefficient Labour politicians. Of the two, they are now finding that they prefer the corrupt, inefficient Labour version. And, of course, they'd rather cut their arms off with rusty fish knives than vote tory - and who could blame them?

In Scotland though, the SNP is ripping both Labour and the limpdims apart, which goes to show that, when there is a credible electoral alternative to the lib-lab-con, people will go for it - more out of a sense of curiosity than anything else. That says a great deal for UKIP in England, which under the tutelage of Farage has long ceased to be a credible alternative, and will continue to fail as long as he squanders every opportunity (and most of the money) he gets.

Elsewhere, Labour and Tories were roughly neck and neck before they actually started counting anything. Given that there are now enough people left in local government who can actually count to eleven with their socks still on, Labour are looking to win 600 seats by the end of the overtime period, once the rigged postal vote is in and weighed.

The new mix will signal the desperation of people caught on the two-party merry-go-round, and the fact that Labour is more efficient at rigging the postal vote than Cameron's Tories. In so far as there is an honest vote, it suggests that, having ditched Brown's labourites for Cameron's conserverites, they are now back with Ed's labourites having now rejected Nicky's limpdims on the way. Better the sack of poo you know ...

And the "no" vote wins the referendum thingie. Although the formal results are not in yet - "everybody" knows it is a foregone conclusion - and who cares? The political insult of the decade will be gone and forgotten within days. The referendum has served its purpose in giving the professional Tory eurosceptics something to play with, keeping their minds off being eurosceptics (look at who was running the "no campaign").

With hindsight, the moronic Independent is saying the choice of luvvie Eddie Izzard (who just happened to be the leading light of the "yes" to the euro campaign) to front this "yes" campaign is thought to be "well-intentioned but naïve". A poll has disclosed that only one in four of the public knew that the comedian was backing AV. Only one in ten knew who he was and only one in three hundred thousand knew he was a comedian. A planning meeting is pictured below.

Caroline Flint, one of the few half-way decent MPs left, says the whole idea of a referendum was misguided: "The truth is the public really did not want this referendum, there are other priorities for people". She is dead right, but that won't stop the political claque going orgasmic about whether the coalition can survive, although the Vince Table thinks it will.

Limpdim's Lord Pantsdown has launched a "scathing attack" on Call Me Dave for his conduct during the  referendum campaign. In the first sign of recriminations between the coalition parties, the former libdim leader - a close ally of Nick Clegg - accused Dave of a "breach of faith" in letting a largely Tory-funded "no" campaign target Cleggy personally.  Dave made little Nicky cry.

Senior Girliegraph journalists are asking the vital question of whether Chris Huhne's future bid to oust Nicky could be ruined by his estranged wife's tell-all book. The Energy Secretary dumped wife of 26 years Vicky Pryce for his former lesbian lover last year after their affair was unmasked ... Meanwhile, the same old dross remains in place, our rules continue to be made in Brussels, and our media babies remain locked in denial.

Earlier in the day, Maxed Hastings told us to get out and vote "no" otherwise we'll have squabbling, indecisive coalitions. And the clever and sophisticated Tim Montgomerie believes in the tooth fairy, or "the collective wisdom of Twitter", which amounts to the same thing. From the mouths of fools and babes ...

To celebrate a grand day - albeit a little while ago - two of our wonderful plods stopped off for a coffee. At least they weren't beating up innocent rioters, or wannabe voters. Some don't seem to drink coffee though, according to their well-meaning colleagues.

State of the parties at 11:86 ... same as it was at 12:07½. Dire ...

COMMENT THREAD

Shameless

Clinton: Iconic image of White House monitoring operation "may have caught me preventing a cough", reports The Daily Mail, without so much as a blush.

The photo was taken by the White House photographer on Sunday night as Obama and his national security team monitored the assault. Clinton is covering her mouth with her right hand, but she said that the gesture might not convey any special significance. "I am somewhat sheepishly concerned that it was my preventing one of my early spring allergic coughs", she says. "So, it may have no great meaning whatsoever".

The Fluffygraph girlee just carries on as if nothing had ever happened, while the clever and sophisticated blog editor Mr Damian Harris pontificates about "conspiracy theorists".

"The internet played a huge role in spreading false claims about 9/11 in the five years after September 11", he says. "But, if the technology of five years ago was easily adaptable by conspiracy theories, that of 2011 offers infinitely more sophisticated means of making outlandish claims appear as plausible as the BBC evening news".

It is suggested by a commenter that we are entitled to exercise reasonable scepticism, and to ask for a minimum level of evidence to be provided, without being called "conspiracy theorists" by half-arsed journalists whose gullibility extends to believing everything they have been told by the White House ... and finding the BBC evening news "plausible".

Mr Harris was not available for comment.

COMMENT: BIN LADEN THREAD

Frozen Poles

We might be basking in the sunshine in England – although it is dull and wet at the time of writing – but the Poles are not having such a good time of it. May snowfall and freezing temperatures have descended on south-western Poland, with 41 road deaths and 400 accidents reported since the May weekend began. Traffic has struggled particularly as many drivers had already switched to summer tyres.

In the Lower Silesia and Opole regions, 100,000 homes were left without electricity and temperatures have plummeted as low as 0°C in some areas as frost and heavy fog hampered traffic. Power lines also went down in Walbrzych, Jelenia Góra and the Wroclaw area after trees heavy with snow fell and brought down electricity cables.

The same story applies further east, with the previouly ice-bound Gulf of Finland only now clearing. Just three weeks ago, 38 cargo ships were awaiting icebreaker assistance.

All of this points to a cold weather system parked over eastern Euope, affecting our weather here. This puts into focus the ritual pessimism about the state of the Arctic ice. These professional doom-mongers, such as the wuzzies in the National Snow and Ice Data Centre, are getting more than a little tiresome with the constant predictions of disappearing ice.

I really would like them to pop down to the Port of St Petersburg to tell the authorities there that they are wasting all their money investigating in new icebreaker capacity. I suspect the response might be фокстрот Оскар.

COMMENT THREAD

Honey! They stole my vote!

Well, I would have liked to have voted for my local council, but Bradford electoral services have screwed up and failed to register me and Mrs EU Referendum. Thus, on my arrival at the Polling Station, I was not allowed to vote.

Nonetheless, the kindly young ladies got on to the electoral offices by phone, to try and sort it out. On the phone, I made it very clear what I thought of Council officials stealing my vote, but with witnesses present and in a polling station, all can attest that I was polite and offered no threats to the lady I was speaking to, or to any of the staff at the polling station.

Anyhow, the lady at the "town hall" promised to find out what went wrong and ring me back. When she rang off, what she actually did was call the police. No less than three West Yorkshire crime fighters arrive - two little girlies and a big brave man with his stick and his flak jacket. But they were as puzzled as the rest of us at the polling station, where we are having a general conversation to while away the time, while we were waiting.

Only then does the slime ring back to claim that our application went in late, ignoring the fact that we had already sent in a request some months before. But the slime has spoken. Bradford Council has stolen our vote and are lying through their teeth about it - so we don't get to vote today. But, guess what ... they still want our money.

Lovely little system we have in this country. If they don't have a form every year from you saying you exist – or they manage to lose it – then they steal your vote. But strangely, you don't have to tell them you still exist before they send your Council Tax bill. And when you dare to complain about your vote being stolen, they call out the police.

Then, if you take the principle of no taxation without representation seriously, guess what they do? They put you in prison! Yay!

Welcome to the Fascist state of Bradford.

COMMENT: AV THREAD

Change of pace

I've been meaning to do this (and much else) for a couple of days: via Autonomous Mind, we get the story from Mary Ellen Synon about craven Irish politicians sucking up to the EU with a special "Europe Day" in their parliament.

This is almost, if not actually, Stockholm syndrome, and underlines the truism that it really does not matter who you vote for any more – as in the recent general election in Ireland, the result is that you simply change the faces, not the underlying philosophy.

With local elections in many parts of the country today, much the same applies, only on a different scale. Here, local administration has largely been delegated to officials, led by a small cabal of councillors in what is known as the "cabinet system". With the bulk of the money provided by central government, and huge administrative areas, the idea of local democracy exists in name only and voting is mainly on party lines.

The supposed core of the democratic system, therefore, has been reduced to an almost (not quite) meaningless ritual, and they now want us today to vote in a referendum on changing a little bit of that ritual, pretending that the change will somehow improve the system as a whole.

Whichever way the vote goes, it will make no difference at all, where it matters – to which extent the vote is of supreme indifference. It has relevance only in that it might temporarily disconcert one or other of the political parties and their leaders.

Underlying the referendum is the arrogance of the politicians who, in ignoring our calls for a referendum on the EU treaty, believe we should address their concerns about adjustments to a voting system which will bring marginal benefits to one party (or not), but none at all to the people. Whatever the system, we still have the "Irish result".

The worst of it all is that in their contempt for the ordinary voter, much of the political class believed that we would be at all interested by their petty obsessions. By and large, we are not, so we go through their shabby little rituals – in diminishing numbers – driven more by habit and a sense of duty than any enthusiasm or belief that things will change.

The tragedy of it all is that so detached have the political classes become that they are no longer able to conceal their contempt for the ordinary people, yet have somehow convinced themselves that they are doing a superb job when they enthuse their own. They do not even begin to understand how loathed they are.

Unfortunately, for the moment, there is no alternative to them. As with a blocked drain awaiting the plumber, we suffer their stench because we have to. That will not always be the case, although none of us can predict the pace of change – when the plumber will arrive. The one thing of which we can be sure, though, is that if the classes continue to treat us with the contempt that has become their norm, the eventual retribution will be terrible – for them and all of us.

COMMENT: AV THREAD

Sailing away

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham thinks that Obama's decision was a mistake. "The whole purpose of sending our soldiers into the compound, rather than an aerial bombardment, was to obtain indisputable proof of bin Laden's death", he says. "I know bin Laden is dead. But the best way to protect and defend our interests overseas is to prove that fact to the rest of the world".

But the further we go into this, the more dubious become the assertions. For instance, the DNA "evidence" gets even more insecure when explored by "Popular Mechanics". It tell us that one complicating factor in identifying Bin Laden is that he has no full siblings. "In the case of half-siblings, it is harder to state that there is a match because all one can do is state that it is likely the two people shared a common ancestor (you would not be able to say they are half-brother and -sister any more than you could say they are cousins)".

This is from Steven Laken, the CEO of DNA analysis firm Cephos, who adds that: "In the case of the bin Ladens, there may have been consanguineous marriages (marriages between related people), and this makes it trickier".

What this amounts to is that the DNA provides no certain measure of identification, and does nothing more than demonstrate a relationship with a familial group that certainly runs to hundreds and possibly thousands. Unless they have something more than facial recognition and the word of a "wife" who talked to the Pakistani authorities, then the Americans do not have enough to prove that they have Bin Laden.

We are, therefore, back in the faith business, with our world split between two basic type, the "believers" and the "evidencers". Of these, Atlas Shrugs believes that Bin Laden has just been topped, but still thinks the pics should be released. Veterans Today, on the other hand, are very much "evidencers", but go further then scepticism and assert unequivocally that Bin Laden has been dead for years. It was his frozen body that was deep-sixed.

Stephen Glover, in The Daily Mail, plays it right down the middle. The growing scepticism, he writes, is illustrated by demands that pictures of Bin Laden's body should be released. This would quell conspiracy theories that he did not die.

At least now, way behind the curve, one MSM writer is beginning to look askance at what is becoming a massive own goal, a completely unforced error – unless Obama and his team do have something to hide. And if they do not, why are they then behaving as if they do?

Earlier yesterday, however, before the theatre of the absurd took on its latest layer of unreality, even (or especially) the great sage Robert Fisk - the man who gave his name to "fisking" - was struggling to take this all seriously. But the Great Fisk was dipping his toes in the water, suggesting that the very sudden, totally unexpected death of this man in Pakistan whom they call Bin Laden should mean that all foreign troops can now go home from Afghanistan, saying "job well done".

Fisk is probably right. This is our exit ticket from Afghanistan. From now on, the propaganda will be all one way. We are making the situation worse, Karzai is a super-hero and can manage very well, the Afghan Army and police are reformed, and can win the war. And the Taliban are jolly good chaps anyway. It was all a misunderstanding.

And so the dreary little charade will play itself out. Give it two years, in good time for presidential election (and nicely timed to suit Cameron here), and the troops will be setting sail from Kabul, on their way home. What is more, the Americans will have the photos to prove it, the only ones we're actually going to get.

COMMENT: BIN LADEN THREAD

Cutting his losses

Well, it looks as if we're not going to get the Bin Liner pics. POTUS has decided – according to Reuters. White House spokesman Jay Carney conveys the Obama view that: "Given the graphic nature of these photos it would create a national security risk". The man says:

We discussed this internally, keep in mind that we are absolutely certain that it is him ... it is important that very graphic photos of someone shot in the head are not floating around as a propaganda tool ... We don't trot out this stuff as trophies ... we don't need to spike the football.

We got some early intimation of this, with a report from Rep. Mike Rogers saying: "I have to tell you I think I'm more where the president is on this. I'm a little bit reluctant, I'll tell you why. The conspiracy theorists are going to see the pictures, find ten reasons why they think it's someone else".

So, reading between the lines, the pic(s) on which the US government relied on for identification don't stand up. And, since an increasing number of people don't believe the BS they are being fed – apart from clever sophisticates like Tim Montgomerie - I suppose the US administration is cutting its losses. There is no need to give the non-believers any more ammunition than they have already.

More to the point, Obama is rejoicing in improved poll ratings, and may believe that he has milked as much as he can get out of the situation. A majority now approve of his overall job performance, as well as his handling of foreign policy, the war in Afghanistan and the threat of terrorism. This is according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

But then, there is nought so queer as folks. Even though an insider is saying that Obama hesitated (above), and made a pig's ear of the whole venture, people are easily pleased. And there is always a little girlie around to applaud him (below), the dreadful Cristina Odone, who even gives fluffy girlies a bad name.

With such truly crass commentary, there is not much hope left for civilisation. Only a society in terminal decline could actually produce such irredeemable tosh.

COMMENT: BIN LADEN THREAD

Getting it wrong

After the strident headlines, the US administration is clawing back. CIA Director Leon Panetta now says that Obama did not see Bin Laden "getting gunned down". He came to know that he was killed only after a team used the code "Geronimo", signifying his capture - with even that assertion not making sense. Did the code-word signify capture, or a kill?

Anyhow, it was reported yesterday that Obama along with his high-level team had watched live coverage in the White House, as the commandos shot the world's most wanted terrorist, via a video camera fixed to the helmet of a US Navy Seal.

Amongst those retailing the fiction was The Daily Mail (see picture above). And then what about this drivel from Cristina Odone, the girlie's girlie who pollutes The Daily Failygraph? But Panetta stresses that officials in the Situation Room "didn't know just exactly what was going on" on Sunday for 20 to 25 minutes when the team entered the compound.

Now, did we not write about journalists putting their names to events which none of them had witnessed, or had any means of knowing that they, and the other things they wrote about, were true? Did we not write about belief systems?

Are we to see a retraction from all those clever sophisticates who wrote their falsehoods, believing them to be true – or not bothering to find out and taking them on trust? And if they got those details wrong, those which they so confidently retailed, what else did they get wrong? And why are we simpletons who need silly little things like evidence so wrong?

Then, given the very obvious gullibility of our loathsome media - these so clever, so sophisticated people - what can you trust from them? What can you trust from people who are telling us things as fact which, less than 24 hours later, are admitted to be false? And we are not referring to events in some far-flung corner of the earth, but in Washington. And how much more BS are clever, sophisticated people going to take before they wake up and realise that they are being fed BS ... and then start growing up?

And, while we're about it, it would be nice to hear from Mr Tim Montgomerie and Mr Tom Harris MP, whom we e-mailed yesterday. We await their observations with very great interest. But why is it that I suspect that we will hear nothing more from these clever, sophisticated people? No doubt they are far too grand and far too clever to reply to mail from such lowly mortals as us.

COMMENT: BIN LADEN THREAD

Breaking news – gnomes seized

We break off from following the developments on the Bin Laden story to bring you the important news that garden gnome-loving grandmother Veronica Pratt had one special request when she died - she wanted her colourful collection to line the route of her funeral procession.

The 82-year-old's family duly laid 30 of her favourite gnomes and ornaments on a roundabout in Narberth where the cortege would past - only to see them confiscated by the "elf and safety" police.

Pembrokeshire Council officers (known locally as the "Taffiban") said they had been instructed to remove the gnomes after Welsh Assembly transport officials said they could be "distracting" to other road users. Mrs Pratt's family said they were sad to see the gnomes, on Penblewin roundabout, taken away.

Another victory for common sense, humanity and intelligent government.

COMMENT THREAD

They didn't!

Exclusive pictures of Bin Laden's burial at sea ... no wonder they did not want to publish them (sorry about the quality - same team that took the facial recognition pics). It is known as the Chappaquiddick technique, pioneered on the USS Kennedy, before its general adoption (below).

COMMENT: BIN LADEN THREAD

Unravelling

Different days, different spokesmen, different stories, and the Boys Own' narrative begins to unravel. From the Failygraph, we get the following:

Officials said on Monday that bin Laden's body had initially been identified using facial recognition technology on a photograph wired back to Washington from Abbottabad, before a DNA test was carried out that proved with "99.9 per cent certainty" that it was the al-Qaeda leader.

But yesterday a US congressman cast doubt on whether the DNA tests had yet been carried out. Representative Ron Paul, a Republican presidential candidate and a doctor, said: "I understand he was killed Sunday afternoon and by Sunday nine o’clock it was announced that the President would speak and they had DNA proof of the individual. I didn't know they could do DNA that quickly. Then they came back and said it was facial features and we'll get the results of the DNA later".

The media are quite shameless. They report fiction as fact, deliver uncritically untested and unfounded assertions, and then make a meal out of questioning the very assertions they themselves have promulgated.

And the fact that we are two days ahead of the field is neither here nor there – we are only a blog, not the clever MSM. But I wrote two days ago that it takes 24-72 hours to get a DNA specimen result. With a high quality sample, it is possible to get a preliminary result in as little as six hours, but you still have to get the sample to the lab ... which was where?

And, in any case, they are only making a comparison with the sister's DNA. That just proves a familial relationship. It is not proof – or anything like it - of identity. Thus, we are now told the reliance was on facial recognition technology, using a photograph "wired back" to Washington from Abbottabad. Was that before or after his face was blown away with two head shots? Does anybody realise how unreliable facial recognition technology is, and how high the error rate is, even under optimal conditions? Says Wikipedia:

Other conditions where face recognition does not work well include poor lighting, sunglasses, long hair, or other objects partially covering the subject's face, and low resolution images. Another serious disadvantage is that many systems are less effective if facial expressions vary. Even a big smile can render the system less effective.

Would a blank stare and a grimace through having your head shot off, as well as being dead, also have a marginal effect? At least, whoever they shot probably wasn't smiling.

Then, let's not talk about the lighting conditions, or whether they took the photograph square on. Of course, they could have published the photograph(s) on which they relied ... that would settle any doubts. They could have sent copies of the photographs to independent universities, which specialise in face recognition technology, for independent corroboration. But all this they seem strangely reluctant to do so.

However, joining in this theatre of the absurd, we now have The Times tell us that Osama bin Laden’s 12-year-old daughter has reportedly told Pakistani investigators that her father was captured alive by US Special Forces before being shot dead in front of his family. Presumably, it was after that, with the famous head shots, that they then took the photograph for facial recognition purposes.

Well, at least if there are any doubts, the US have custody of the body, so they can repeat the tests. Oh woops! They've dumped the body in the Arabian Sea - or so I am told by a man, who knows another man, who knows a man who told him. He does not work in Area 51 by the way.

But it is a pity that a body has been deep-sixed (exclusive picture above, courtesy Anoneumous - it was an aircraft carrier ...). However, even if the evidence was now recoverable, it would not be conclusive. Would anybody like to tell me why the story so far is not a pile of horse manure?

COMMENT: BIN LADEN THREAD

Why?

Starkey does a piece on AV in The Daily Mail arguing against Clegg's folly. It elicits one comment (so far), which gets 22 (at the time of writing – increased to 32) adverse ratings. The point of view is not unreasonable, and not voting is a reasonable tactical decision. Why such hostility? Should one despair at Mail readers?

Meanwhile, The Independent notes that the "no" campaign is ahead, and despairingly calls for its readers to "Just say Yes to voting reform". The pic is of a "yes" against a background of a cross. To me, that actually conveys a negative message. But, like Obama, I'm sure they know what they're doing.

COMMENT: AV THREAD

Achieving the impossible

Once you get Alex Jones on-side, you are doomed. He is the conspiracy theorists' conspiracy theorist, which means that when he covers a subject, the line he takes can be dismissed by all "sensible" people as the ravings of a loon. However, just because Jones says it does not automatically make it wrong, any more than a US president saying it makes it right.

Oddly enough, I had not seen this video (above) until long after I'd written my own piece. Thus, quite separately and independently, we cover the same ground. But, while Jones is unreserved about calling the current death scene a "hoax", I am not prepared to go that far.

However, he and I share the same reservations about this rather strange decision to dispose of the body at sea. The "shrine" argument does not really hold together and Mr Obama would have done far better to have submitted the body to independent experts, for a full autopsy – not least to rule out any suggestion that the body had been preserved, and brought out for this current exercise.

The contrast with this and previous practice remains extreme. For instance, when al-Qaida's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in a US airstrike in June 2006, the US military performed an autopsy, in part to dispel allegations in the immediate aftermath of the airstrike that the terrorist leader had been beaten or shot by US soldiers while in American custody.

There was no rush to get the body buried, and nor was there with Saddam Hussein's sons. But here, there is not even the slightest concession to the need for evidence gathering. The problem we thus have is that Obama's actions (or inaction) invite suspicion. And consider this. If someone behaves in a suspicious manner, are those who become suspicious then wrong?

That said, I am not going down the conspiracy route. But, as I have also remarked on the forum, unlike in previous terrorist slayings, Obama has made no attempt whatsoever to provide evidence that events are as he claims. He is relying entirely on the belief system. Even The Guardian is reporting the disquiet, telling us that: "Obama administration's insistence that DNA tests prove body is 'virtually 100% match' fails to silence calls for graphic evidence".

Yet we are now hearing that the White House is having "reservations" about releasing what it says is a "gruesome" photograph of a (sic) dead Osama bin Laden. It could be "inflammatory", officials are suggesting. Jay Carney, a White House press officer, tells us: "We will continue to review that and make decisions about the appropriateness of releasing that information ... There are sensitivities here concerning the appropriateness of releasing photos".

However, he appears to be referring to images from the "helmet cams" worn by the Navy Seals who stormed what is said to be bin Laden's compound. But these were not the only images. The body was cleaned up and flown to the Carl Vinson aircraft carrier for committal to the deep. Photographs were taken of the body during that period. A "sanitised" picture should be available.

At least one US representative is unequivocal on this issue. "The photos have to be released", says Rep. Joe Heck, a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence: "Most definitely - to make sure we get rid of any conspiracy theorists that think that we didn't take care of bin Laden".

Bizarrely, he, this writer and the Taliban are sharing the same territory. Spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid, in a statement emailed to journalists, is also demanding sight of the photographs. "This news is only coming from one side, from Obama's office", he writes, "and America has not shown any evidence or proof to support this claim".

This does not stop a "Daily Mail Reporter" writing under the title: "After the hurried burial, now for the conspiracy theories". He (or she) writes:

Knowing there would be disbelievers, the US says it used convincing means to confirm Osama bin Laden's identity during and after the firefight that killed him. But the mystique that surrounded the terrorist chieftain in life is persisting in death. Was it really him? How do we know? Where are the pictures?

One is troubled by this. The reporter may be right about the US saying that it used convincing means to confirm Bin Laden's identity. But surely reporter cannot be so stupid as not to realise that the US has not provided any evidence to the outside world, and has shut down any opportunity to acquire independent evidence, with the hasty burial at sea.

Given that in the past the US has provided evidence, and given that there are special circumstances here – with claims that Bin Laden had been killed some time earlier and kept "on ice" – one might have thought that the US government would pre-empt the naysayers, and make the necessary evidence available.

Instead, it seems almost if the Obama administration is going out of its way to create doubt, to invite suspicion, even mocking those who want evidence. A White House spokesman told reporters to "be patient, given how much information has already been released". He must know full well that the key information, the only information that really matters, has not been released.

From this side of the fence, however, there is no "conspiracy theory". Simply, one observes that the US president has made claims about the death of Osama Bin Laden and, two days after the event, has still not furnished evidence to support his claims. That is fact.

I am beginning to get the overpowering impression that Barack Hussein Obama is trying to take us for fools. If he continues down this path, he will achieve something many people would have thought impossible – turning Alex Jones into a credible reporter.

COMMENT: BIN LADEN THREAD

The ex-Kommissar speaks

What knoweth this man of democracy? Raedwald, on the other hand argues that ending the abuses of the postal voting system, would bring a real improvement.

But then, that is always something you can guarantee with our politicians. They will never address the real problems. They are more interested in playing Grand old Duke of York, marching their troops up to the top of the hill, and marching them down again.

They do it because they can, and because it keeps the little brains of their followers occupied.

COMMENT THREAD

Unlawfully killed

PC Simon Harwood, a member of the Metropolitan Police's Territorial Support Group, used "excessive and unreasonable force" against Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests in London, a jury has decided.

To reach an unlawful killing conclusion, says The Guardian, the jury were required to have been satisfied to a higher burden of proof than the other possible verdicts, which could have been reached "on the balance of probabilities". They had to be convinced "beyond reasonable doubt", the same threshold used in criminal trials.

Now, we are told, the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, who decided in July last year not to prosecute Harwood for manslaughter, will now be under intense pressure to reverse that decision. My guess is that – as always – he will try to tough it out, and avoid a prosecution.

Therein does lie the core of the problem – we are becoming an "us and them" society, where there is one rule for them and another for us. The police, on the one hand, get away with murder, while on the other hand punish the public for minor infractions of the law.

Actually, it would be more accurate to say we are returning to an "us and them" society – we never really left it. In the website to which I linked yesterday, there was a traditional English rhyme:

They hang the man and flog the woman
That steals the goose from off the common,
But let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose.

Thus, t'was ever thus – except that, briefly, after the War, there was some attempt to seek a more egalitarian society, which largely got bogged down in Labour's idea of socialism. But now, seventy years on, there is not even the pretence. This a society where the police beat people up on the streets and, even though caught in the act, the DPP decides that no further action is necessary.

We can draw our own conclusions from that, but they are not happy ones. Raedwald makes some very pertinent observations in this respect, and underlines the crucial point that this is a system failure. This is not just a rogue copper ... it is a rogue system.

COMMENT THREAD

Nothing changes

Everything has changed, and nothing has changed. And in the "nothing changed" camp, we are in exactly the same position that we were yesterday: a man whom the US president sincerely believes to have been Bin Laden was shot on Sunday by special forces, but no reliable evidence of his identity has yet been shown to the wider public.

As far as it goes, therefore, we are still in "belief system" politics. If you believe Bin Laden was killed on Sunday by US special forces, then you are in the belief business. You are not relying on evidence, and just because the self-referential media loop is caught up in the hystérie du jour doesn't make the fact of Bin Laden's death (or not) any more true ... or less true.

It has got to the stage now, however, where facts and the truth no longer matter. We are in one of those not uncommon situations where the "truth" becomes the truth because that is what people believe it to be, and want it to be. And there's nought more wrong than folks, when they want to be. After all, enough voted respectively for Obama and Cameron for them to get to some position of authority, if not power.

This is the same brand of "truth" that has it that the Germans rather than the French provoked the start of the Second World War, that RAF Fighter Command and "the few" won the Battle of Britain, and even that the Tesco store was responsible for the recent riots in Bristol. People believe what they want to believe, and it is their beliefs – largely untrammelled by the truth – that shape events.

In that sense, things have changed. The Americans have woken up feeling differently about themselves. Obama has taken on – briefly – the mantle of a credible leader. The Pakistanis are temporarily discommoded, and the Indian politicians are as usual stirring things in the background, putting on the "goody-two-shoes" act while continuing to cause mayhem.

The thing to watch for is that all of this may translate into an American determination now to quit Afghanistan. If enough of them manage to convince themselves of a new and convenient "truth", that the demise of Bin Laden means the end of al Qaida, they can then argue that there is no justification for the continuing military adventure.

The Armed Forces can leave with "honor", bands playing; they can all give themselves another batch of medals and knitting badges and go home to pile on the pounds in the obesity stakes that kill more Americans than Bin Laden ever did.

As for the "war on terror", Afghanistan can revert to the Biden "surveillance" model. The benighted country can return its backwater of sodomy and corruption. The EU will find in this its natural home and can run the policing. The Chinese can run the productive economy and the tribes will continue their traditional occupations of opium production and gun running. That leaves the Indians to carry on fomenting trouble and wrecking the Pakistani economy, while milking gullible Western nations for aid, which they can then use to further their interests in the region.

With that, we are back where we came in. Everything has changed, and nothing has changed. For a very short time I watched BBC News 24 this morning, and briefly listened to some supposed security expert prattle on about the current situation, observing that he did not even begin to know what he is talking about.

Then that doesn't matter either. We are in the grip of the Great Game. In a few days time, or perhaps a little longer - depending on whether something else crops up for the hand wavers to get excited about – the drama of the day will have moved on. But what will remain in place will be the belief systems which keep the show on the road. To that extent, nothing has changed at all.

COMMENT: BIN LADEN THREAD

Go strikers! Go!

Workers at the Equalities and Human Rights Commission will take strike action tomorrow in protest at spending cuts, with a further walk-out planned next week. Members of the Public and Commercial Services union will stop work for an hour from 11am and mount picket lines at the commission's main offices in London, Cardiff, Glasgow, Birmingham and Manchester.

If ever there was a strike we supported, it is this one. May it be long, bloody ... and fruitless.

COMMENT THREAD

Prince of hypocrits

A new video from the "not evil, just wrong" team, to commemorate Prince Charles travelling today by private jet the US to lecture us about "sustainability" at Georgetown University in Washington DC. They asked us to post the video, and we're happy to do so. Bin Laden or not, life goes on - unless you're Bin Laden, of course.

The man (Prince Charles) blew it really big time for us when he started cosying up to the EU - as an aside, it is interesting that Charlie Boy and Bin Laden have in common their concern about global warming ... along with Charles Manson. Interesting trio, that - each in their own way, men who have done enormous damage.

And there was also that little matter of the Prince's ill-judged support for the CRU. Surrounded by sycophants, there is no one around him to tell him what a fool he is - but then a man of his stature is judged by the advisers he appoints. He makes his own grief and, for all he cares, he has built up a large cadre within this nation that would sooner see him dead than king.

Certainly, if Charles (the Prince, that is ... I don't think Manson is in the running) ever gets to the throne, I'm a republican.

COMMENT THREAD

A feast of fools

Nothing could have been further from my mind as I scanned the morning's news yesterday than spending the best part of the day exploring the recent history of Osama Bin Laden's many deaths.

If, as increasingly seems likely, but not yet proven to any satisfactory degree, Bin Laden has finally been despatched, then all the previous commentators – including heads of state and senior government officials – who confidently asserted that the man had already been killed, were wrong. Further, the journalists who wrote the stories publicising these views were portraying falsehoods. They too were wrong.

As it stands, however – and certainly as it stood yesterday – those, including those in the US government, who were asserting that Bin Laden had now been killed were offering no more or better evidence than those who went before them.

Further, the source of the claim was the US government. And like all or any governments, it is prone to error, to deception and even outright lying. No such organisation has any right to expect trust, and anyone who unconditionally trusts any government is a fool.

Thus, as of yesterday and still, until the US government has proven its assertions, we reserve our position. We do not disbelieve the US government, but nor do we believe it. We simply expect a reasonable level of evidence which translates acceptance of its claim from one of unsupported belief to one of reasoned conclusion, thus also enabling us to reject previous claims as wrong.

Anyone with a modicum of intelligence and sense would, on reading my piece, readily have divined that this was my position. Two, however, did not – one was Tim Montgomerie who used his fool machine to label me an "OBL denier" and the other Tom Harris MP, who on the basis of Montgomerie's jolly little intervention, decided on the label "nutter". That Harris is an MP and should know better does not surprise me in the least. We expect very little from our elected representatives these days.

Subsequently, however. we see reported that White House is weighing whether to release photographs of Osama bin Laden's corpse "amid calls from some key lawmakers to do so to prove the Al-Qaeda chief is truly dead".

John Brennan Obama's anti-terror adviser responds by saying: "We are going to do everything we can to make sure that nobody has any basis to try to deny that we got Osama bin Laden." And that now includes determining whether to release the photographs claimed to have been taken.

"It may be necessary to release the pictures - as gruesome as they undoubtedly will be, because he's been shot in the head - to quell any doubts that this somehow is a ruse that the American government has carried out", says Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joseph Lieberman.

Senator Susan Collins, the most senior Republican on Lieberman's committee, declares she has "absolutely no doubt" Bin Laden has been killed, but adds: "... I recognize that there will be those who will try to generate this myth that he's alive, and that we missed him somehow, and in order to put that to rest it may be necessary to release some of the pictures, or video, or the DNA test."

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, a Republican, says US officials are working through whether to release photos of bin Laden's corpse. "We want to make sure that we maintain dignity - if there was any - in Osama bin Laden, so that we don't inflame problems other places in the world and still provide enough evidence that people are confident that it was Osama bin Laden," he adds.

None of them have precisely got the point, but they are closer to it than either Montgomerie or Harris. It is no part of the duty of a responsible and alert citizen to believe unsupported assertions made by governments – and every bit a duty to exercise sensible scepticism. Neither governments nor anyone in authority should ever be given an easy ride. If they make claims, they should be required to support them.

Interestingly, the White House's original plan had been to bomb the house, but Obama ultimately decided against that. "The helicopter raid was riskier. It was more daring", an official said. "But he wanted proof. He didn't want to just leave a pile of rubble". The president wanted proof – which is deemed reasonable. When we ask for the same, Montgomerie and Harris would have us as "deniers" and "nutters".

The very fact that clever sophisticates like Montgomerie and Harris could not see this inconsistency, and resorted to their silly comments, tells us we have a problem. For all their cleverness, they are too gullible, too trusting. They are fools at large – dangerous to themselves and the rest of us. And there are far too many like them.

The meaning of the picture, incidentally, may be obscure, but the title of the website from which it comes makes the point. You may chose who is who.

COMMENT: BIN LADEN THREAD

How very convenient

Obama is in trouble, not least after putting out what is widely thought to be a forged birth certificate. And, hey presto! He suddenly announces that Bin Laden is dead, supposedly killed on Sunday in a compound in Pakistan during a raid by US Navy Seals - the day after the anniversary of Hitler's death.

This is by no means the first time Bin Laden has been pronounced dead. Diverse sources have been claiming this for some time. As early as December 2001, the Pakistani president Gen Pervez Musharraf was mooting that he had been killed by American bombardments in his mountain base of Bora Bora.

Famously, Mark Steyn, writing for The Spectator, insisted that Bin Laden was dead and, in September 2002, during an interview, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a senior member of al Qaida, mistakenly referred to Bin Laden in the past tense. The reporter Yosri Fouda, London bureau chief for al-Jazeera, concluded that bin Laden is now likely to be dead.

Two months later there was strong speculation from US syndicated columnist, Andy Rooney, that the al Qaeda leader was dead, on the basis of the poor quality of a recent video tape recently released. He was supported by Dale Watson, the FBI's then soon to be retiring counter-terrorism chief. "I personally think he is probably not with us anymore", said Watson.

Come March 2003, Defense Secretary Donald H Rumsfeld was raising the possibility that bin Laden was dead."The reality is that bin Laden is spending a great deal of his time - if he is alive today - hiding and running and trying to communicate and trying to survive", he said.

Then, in one of the more famous episodes, in April 2005, the London-based Arabic daily Asharq Al Awsat announced that Bin Laden was dead. On 2 November 2007, Benazir Bhutto – less than two months before her assassination – claimed in an interview with the BBC's David Frost that Osama bin Laden had been "murdered" (partial transcript here and video below).



In April 2009 the Pakistan president, now Asif Ali Zardari, said Pakistani intelligence believed Bin Laden dead, and in September of the same year, the Daily Mail was asking: "Has Osama Bin Laden been dead for seven years - and are the US and Britain covering it up to continue war on terror?"

Now, so often has Osama Bin Laden been pronounced dead, that when Obama yesterday made his announcement, he was according to this source, at least the ninth major head of state or high-ranking government official to have done so – and that is discounting all the small-fry.

There was no hard evidence for any of these and many more earlier assertions, but a lot of serious people have strongly believed Bin Laden was dead. Now it seems, they were all wrong ... every one of them. Except that, looking at the multiple reports of Obama's current claim, there seems to be a similar lack of confirmation. He has offered no better (or more) evidence to support his claim than any of his antecedents.

Because of the profusion of rumour, claim and counter-claim, the US military has long been used to being treated with scepticism when it comes to its own claims of taking out key terrorists. When announcing successes, therefore, it has developed a routine of offering three types of evidence – photographs of the body, independent witness reports, and DNA identification evidence. A classic example was the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Even the revered Spectator dimly understands that the US treatment of the media is now different. It cites the example of Saddam Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay, when they were killed. Gruesome though they were, the US authorities were quick to release photographs of the pair, to still scepticism amongst Iraqis. But when it comes to Bin Laden's latest death, although Obama claims that the Seals "took custody of his body", we have not so far seen any official photographs.

Earlier on, The Daily Mail was claiming a "confirmed kill", showing a screen grab from Pakistan's Express TV, purporting to show bin Laden's "maimed face" (above). A better photograph was dismissed as a photoshop fake, with an illustration of how it was done here. The Guardian confirmed that the picture was a fake that had been circulating on the internet for years.

That means that, as yet, we have absolutely no independent evidence to support Obama's claim. There cannot yet be any details from a post mortem examination as it is too early. Some might argue, though, that we also need reliable evidence that excludes any possibility of the body having been preserved. We have, after all, been there before, and there have been those persistent reports of his earlier demise.

However, the Mail promises us that "experts used facial recognition techniques to identify the slain terrorist and performed DNA tests, the results of which will be available in the coming days". WCTV Channel 5 TV is claiming that a DNA match has already been made, giving a 99.9 percent certainty of a positive identification. It was that, we are told, which gave Obama the confidence to make his claim. Interestingly though, just the laboratory procedure takes between 24-72 hours, so it hardly seems as if Obama had enough time.

Such results, if they can be trusted, might provide some evidence that Bin Laden is dead. Photographs on their own may prove of limited value as the use of doubles is not unknown. But there are also the questions of when and where Bin Laden died. These need corroboration.

As for independent tests, we are told that the body has already been buried at sea, "to avoid his grave site becoming a focus as Saddam Hussain's grave has become in Iraq". This means there can be no independent corroboration, which is asking for trouble. It is almost as if the US authorities are going out of their way to invite suspicion.

And to add to the confusion, the Taliban in Pakistan are claiming that their leader is still alive and that reports of his death are baseless. This is according to Karachi-based GEO Television, citing a statement from the group. Are they going to be setting out on a fishing expedition?

Cutting to the chase, all we have - many hours after the news has broken - is an unsupported claim by a tarnished president. The claim may be absolutely true, but at the moment we have no evidence to support it, one way or another. But this should not trouble the media and the clever sophisticates. They are so grand, and wise and knowing that they do not need troublesome things like actual evidence to support their belief systems.

Unlike us simple folk, they, and only they, are clever enough to know that US presidents never lie, have never been mistaken about anything, especially something important ... and have never been involved in botched operations. They would have it that we can safely believe everything we are told. The proof will come later - the sophisticates do not need to wait. They are so clever that they can divine the truth before it even arrives.

Of course, it adds immeasurably to the corps of evidence that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has made a statement regarding the death of Osama bin Laden. When one is a real sophisticate, what more can one possibly need? Well, a Boys' Own narrative from The Guardian helps:

The Americans scoured the house for intelligence, took photos of the body, using facial recognition technology to compare it with pictures. It was him ... Bin Laden's body was taken to the US aircraft carrier Carl Vinson in the Arabian Gulf. Hours later, it was wrapped in white cloth, and – after, it is said, the administration of Islamic burial rites – it was weighted and dropped from a plank into the sea. The location was not revealed.

Three journalists put their name to this, claiming ownership of it. None of them witnessed the events, or have any means of knowing that they, and the other things they wrote about, were true.

In a more cautious age, such material might have been referenced to source, with the writers standing back. But not any more. Tens of thousands of journalists, politicians and commentators blindly recycle exactly the same material, fed to them by the Obama publicity machine. Never mind the quality, feel the width. We the readers can be assured that there is no way the media would be publishing it if it was not 100 percent true.

Now that so many clever, sophisticated people have an investment in their beliefs being true, we cannot possibly permit any doubt. To doubt is to become that most venal of all creatures, a "denier". To avoid that label, you must not ask questions my child. Just shut up and believe. You know it makes sense.

And all too often, ladies and gentlemen, that is how history is made.

COMMENT: BIN LADEN THREAD

Drawing the battle-lines

There is something particularly inappropriate about a major national newspaper giving over its space to a politician, allowing him free rein to promote a tendentious cause. The breed has more than enough access as it is, and anything they have to offer should stand and fall on its merits as a news item, treated in the normal way of such things.

When the politician is David Cameron, however, and he makes claim to supporting the cause of democracy, the offence is compounded. But there he is in The Daily Failygraph telling us, in an authored piece, why "keeping first past the post is vital for democracy".

This is, as we never tire of pointing out, the man who refused us a referendum on the EU's Lisbon Treaty, and is content to allow us to be ruled an anti-democratic alien construct, of which he and his ministers are part. And he has the nerve to lecture us on democracy.

In pursuit of this general aim, he asks us: "Do you want elections that are – as Churchill put it – 'determined by the most worthless votes given for the most worthless candidates'"? In response, we could ask him why we have elections at all when most of our laws and nearly all our policies are made in Brussels by an unelected supranational government. But, if we did, answer there would be none.

It is no longer even worth speculating whether the man is stupid, or is just mocking his own electorate, but he can be assured that some of us can see the irony of a man who pretends to be prime minister, seeking a result in an unwanted referendum on a voting system change, when it matters not who we vote for.

This is no light matter, and in ignoring our concerns, Mr Cameron makes a fool of himself. He does it to himself without our assistance, and by so doing denies himself any chance of gaining our respect or support – not that he cares in the least.

But the newspaper, in giving so freely a platform to this fool, is likewise tainted – not that it cares either. We hold our views, the politicians and the media hold theirs. There is no longer a meeting of minds, nor any possibility of that happening. So are the battle-lines drawn.

COMMENT THREAD

The march of Ruritania

"The Edwardian braid and sashes worn by Princes and Dukes emphasised that our Armed Forces are shrunken remnants – lots of big hats, not many planes, ships or soldiers", writes Peter Hitchens. "Never have they looked so laughably Ruritanian".

And more or less the same point is made by Booker as he writes of politicians hiding their plans to put French jets on Royal Navy carriers. The Royal Navy won't be flying Anglo-US Joint Strike Fighters, but providing a platform for French Rafales as part of an EU force, he tells us.

It is all there, in black and white, the treaties going back to the deal made by John Major in 1996, extended in St. Malo by Tony Blair in 1998, in Helsinki in 1999 and then again in 2000 and 2006, and then further extended by Euroslime Dave in November 2010.

The point that comes over from this is that it does not matter one whit who occupies No. 10 – the same old integration agenda goes ahead. From Major through to Cameron, four prime ministers have pursued exactly the same agenda.

Thus does Booker write that the magnificent military pageantry of the royal wedding coincided, sadly, with yet another humiliating instance of the precipitate decline in Britain's military power. Soon, all we will have is lots of big hats, as we hand over operational control over our few remaining assets to an Anglo-French consortium, where the one operational carrier that we will have will be used as a platform for French aircraft.

The point that must be emphasised again and again is that this has always been the plan, ever since 1996, under the last Tory government. The carriers have always been earmarked for a joint Anglo-French project. Their purpose has been to serve as the main Anglo-French contribution to the European Rapid Reaction Force, as agreed by Tony Blair at Helsinki in 1999.

That is what makes our pageantry and the military splendour a hollow charade. It had some meaning when it was a reflection of our power and status, but when we have more admirals than ships, more generals than battalions, and our sad little navee goes to sea with iPods and EU flags, earmarked to further EU grandiosity, then the splendour takes on a Ruritanian character. It is all show and no substance.

That is what it has come down to. That is why there can be no pride in watching a celebration of something that no longer exists - just overwhelming sadness. We have sold the substance of Great Britain on the altar of European integration. What is left is just part of the tourist industry. We might as well sell it to Butlins, with Mrs Windsor the executive chairman.

But then we live in a land of collective delusion. Author of the original Anglo-French treaty in 1996, and much more, was then defence secretary Michael Portillo. This is the man who now writes in The Daily Mail that he was "so glad" to have mingled with the London crowds, finding, "to his surprise", a nation "who still measure their lives by Royal events ... and sing the National Anthem".

"Our country is high-tech, cosmopolitan, secular and monarchist" writes Portillo. Sadly, we are also easily led, easily fooled and easily pleased. As our nation is stolen from us, a man who has played an active part in the process is paid to chronicle the charade he has helped create. He is not even recognised for what he is, the classic Tory "traitor" who is probably so thick that he himself does not even realise what he has done.

COMMENT THREAD

Photos released of violent thugs

The police have released photographs of people suspected of causing a riot in Bristol last week (see above). They are asking the public to help in identifying the culprits.

COMMENT THREAD

Fighting the babysnatchers

It is a disturbing thought that the greatest enemy is usually the enemy within. It is thus axiomatic that, without the active support of our political classes and civil servants, the writ of the European Union would not hold in this country. Their laws are our laws, enforced by our officials, their designated crimes tried in our courts by our judges, the penalties imposed and enforced by the British system.

To that extent, we have been taken over from within, but increasingly we have to concede that even without the EU, many of our systems of public administration have become seriously degraded.

Not least of those are our social services and their too-often partners in crime, the local police forces and the judiciary. Their increasingly bizarre behaviour brings it home to us that, even were we to achieve the miracle and extract ourselves from the EU, that would only be the start of the process needed to restore equity, sanity and justice to public administration.

Evidence of just how much of a mountain we have to climb (and how much the rot has spread) comes with the travails of the heavily pregnant Vicky Haigh. She has now been named by John Hemming MP, using parliamentary privilege, as the woman who Doncaster social services had attempted to jail for the "crime" of complaining about their actions to a meeting in the House of Commons.

So malign is the grip of the legal-police-social services triumvirate that they even sought to prevent details of Vicky's intended committal being reported by Christopher Booker, thus creating a situation where a free-born English woman can be jailed for an action which is not an offence, and the media is not allowed to report that she has been jailed, or the reason why.

With Hemming's action, Booker is now not only able to report her name, but now she has fled the country, he is able to report some additional detail.

Specifically, he can reveal that Vicky has been forewarned that the social services of another local authority, Nottinghamshire, has been planning to seize her baby when it is born in two weeks' time. Her new child is by a partner with whom she has lived happily for six years, as a loved stepmother to his three children. They were all much looking forward to the new addition to the family.

It is hard to imagine, writes Booker, the ordeals to which this prospective mother has been subjected in the final stages of her pregnancy, which, as he reported earlier (without being able to name her), included her being arrested and held for much of 65 hours in fetid police cells. Three times she had to be rushed to hospital because of complications with her pregnancy, but each time the police took her back to the cells. They finally released her, exhausted, three days after her arrest.

In escaping abroad to evade England's "family protection" system, Vicky is following the example of an increasing number of parents desperate to avoid their children being seized. Dozens have fled, often at great personal cost, to foreign jurisdictions such as Ireland, Sweden, Spain, Uganda or northern Cyprus (though councils have been known to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money trying to get the children back).

What Booker's research (alongside Hemming) has also found is the tendency of social workers increasingly to justify seizing newborn babies from parents on the grounds that the child might be "at risk of emotional abuse". This is an innuendo so vague that the charges can be made on the slimmest of evidence, yet judges seem keen to accept them. These grounds are now used in more than 50 percent of cases where children are taken into care.

Fortunately for Miss Haigh, as she prepares for her child's birth, she has many friends in the Irish racing world who have given her a warm welcome. She is a strong woman – a quality she may have inherited from her father, the footballer Jack Haigh, much respected in his day – and she is determined to fight for the right to have her family. We have not heard the end of this disturbing story, concludes Booker.

And never a truer word was written. There is much more to this case than Booker has been able to publish, and he will have to continue chipping away at the edges until the whole story is known and the abuse has ended. But, as with so much else these days, we have dysfunctional systems, causing real hardship and injustice, and no one in authority seems to be able - or willing - to sort them out.

Before we see the end of this, a lot more people are going to have to become angrier and more strident, and more people are going to have to come to grips with quite how badly our systems have decayed. Not until that happens will there be any progress, but the idea that we have secret courts ready to jail pregnant women should be a wake-up call. A system that can do that can do anything. No one is safe.

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