Author Archives: davidhencke

The dodgy background behind child abuse at Kincora and Richmond

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This post is worth reading for those following the Kincora and Richmond child sexual abuse scandals after the release of Cabinet papers showing that the Thatcher Cabinet discussed and rejected a full scale inquiry into Kincora in 1983. This post is from Chris Fay, who has tirelessly campaigned for justice for kids abused at Elm Guest House. I am not certain about the claim of a Cabinet committee meeting on August 24 1982 to discuss Elm Guest House raid. But the post shows up what a murky world existed at both Kincora and Richmond and also suggests a link between them which I am becomingly increasingly interested in exploring. Chris Fay should be taken seriously because of his involvement in the case at the time of the first raid.

chris46's avatartheneedleblog

Those who have followed events at the Elm Guest House in Barnes, until it was closed down in a “police” raid in 1982, will know there has always been some dispute over the nature of the raid that took place. Carol Kazir (and her legal team) always insisted that this raid was carried out under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 1976. The police and government have always insisted it was under vice law legislation. All I can say is, Carol gave me the “notice to detained persons” issued under the Act, to stop her talking to a lawyer. This I gave to the coroner at Carol Kazir’s inquest in the summer of 1990.

Why has this always been so important and what did it matter which law was used to conduct the raid? Well, without benefit of counsel, Special Branch were the first to question her. They were not interested…

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Immigration: Hypocrisy from the Home Office to Waitrose and Marks and Spencer

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waitrose: aiding and abetting the end of higher agricultural wages

waitrose: aiding and abetting the end of higher agricultural wages

high class/low wage produce from hugh lowe farms pic credit: twitter

high class produce from hugh lowe farms pic credit: twitter

While a Home Office van tours the London borough of Brent telling illegal immigrants to go home or face arrest the food suppliers to our most ” ethical “supermarkets are going out of their way to encourage low paid immigration to Britain to pick the strawberries, raspberries and blackberries now on sale in Waitrose and Marks and Spencer.
The most prominent is run by Marion and Joe Regan. She is one of the leading lights in the fruit growers world and she supplies strawberries to Wimbledon, Waitrose and Marks and Spencer.
Look at the website more closely and you will find it is in English, Polish, Romanian, Bulgarian and Russian The reason is Hugh Lowe Farms are desperate to recruit labour and are targeting workers from these countries to come to Britain. The Bulgarians and Romanians – though not allowed to come here until next year – can come through a government seasonal workers scheme run, yes, by the Home Office – the very ministry behind the offensive vans.
Why Russian you may ask. Well, believe or not, fruit growers are worried ( Nigel Farage of UKIP please note) that when the Romanians and Bulgarians get the freedom of the whole EU, they won’t want to come here. Why? Because the UK under the Tory and Liberal Democrat coalition – is now being regarded as such a low wage economy and so expensive to live in – that they would rather work on farms in other EU countries.
So the fruit growers want to RELAX immigration control further and get the Home Office to approve a seasonal workers scheme for Ukrainians from next year to pick their fruit. The reason Ukrainians are even poorer than Romanians – and can’t get access to the EU.
One might have a smidgeon of sympathy for the growers need to attract workers if it were not they are also the leading lights in abolishing from the end of September the Agriculture Wages Board – which guarantees slightly higher wages than the minimum wage and the supermarkets, while officially neutral, are aiding and abetting them.
This allows lower wages from British workers recruited for the next season – a group as you can see, the fruit growers have great difficulty in recruiting already or they wouldn’t be chasing people abroad.
Waitrose can be directly implicated in the move behind lower pay – since one of their leading women executives, Heather Jenkins sat on the Farming Better Regulation Task Force – the very body that recommended its abolition. Waitrose say her role was independent, but I presume they gave her time off to do it.
Lord Currie, chair of Leckford Farms, ( more in a separate blog about him later) a major supplier to Waitrose and having opened the company’s first farm shop, is hysterical about abolishing the board.
So when you next shop in Waitrose or Marks and Spencer just remember the fruit on sale there from Britain is most likely picked by foreign workers whose suppliers are keen to get rid of a board that provides a minimum standard for workers in an already low paid industry.
Of course Waitrose and M & S deny to me that want to cut wages, so does Marion Regan of Hugh Lowe Farms in Kent- promising to put them up. But Marion Regan’s company was so lax in checking its own website – that until this week it was advertising for foreign workers on its foreign language sites at last year’s rate of pay – a full 11p an hour lower than the legal rate.

Thatcher Cabinet stifled Kincora child sex abuse inquiry 30 years ago

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Lord Prior; pic courtesy of uk.parliament

Lord Prior; pic courtesy of uk.parliament

Jim Prior,now Lord Prior. blocked the opportunity for a full-scale public inquiry into the notorious Kincora child abuse scandal, Cabinet minutes released under the 30 year rule revealed today.

The minutes of the Cabinet meeting (see http://bit.ly/19zxFqT ) reveal on 10 November 1983 Jim Prior, then Northern Ireland Secretary, proposed not to have a full Tribunal of Inquiry – the same mechanism, used to investigate  the Bloody Sunday atrocities, the North Wales child abuse scandal and the Dunblane massacre.
The minutes reveal the Cabinet – who included the now all ennobled Leon Brittan, then home secretary, Michael Heseltine,defence secretary and Norman Fowler, social services secretary, bought the Royal Ulster Constabulary line that there was nothing in it. He said he was being “pressed to hold an inquiry under the Tribunals of Inquiry”. But he didn’t believe Parliament would buy it.
But he said two police investigations had discovered nothing and no further criminal charges were likely.
Instead he proposed to hold a much lesser inquiry, which he did later, to, as he put it “to halt further spread of rumour and unfounded allegations.”
This particular Cabinet minute now looks sick in view of the decision of the Police Service in Northern Ireland to re-open an investigation into the historic allegations at the children’s home where children were sexually abused in the 1970s and early 1980s. As Fiona O’Cleirigh reported on Exaro News the scandal will now be re-opened.
The question is were Thatcher’s Cabinet in 1983 hopelessly naive or were they covering up something they did not want to be ruthlessly exposed in the public domain.

NHS 101 :Bye Bye NHS Direct, Hello rip off merchants

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The announcement today that NHS Direct is to pull out of the NHS 111 services should be no surprise to anybody.
As readers of this blog will know the chief executive already had deep misgivings as https://davidhencke.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/exclusive-byebye-nhs-direct-leaked-chiefs-e-mail/ revealed.
It was already clear that private profit making providers were taking over many services – putting in cheapskate staff in call centres who are probably Googling your symptoms on the net as you speak. And a lot of them don’t have qualified medical staff on board on a 24 hour basis. This is certain if you want to cut costs from £20 to £9 a call and make a profit on each call for their directors.
No wonder NHS Direct couldn’t compete and accident and emergency services are flooded with calls.

The statement says: NHS Direct is seeking to withdraw from the NHS 111 contracts it entered into as these have proved to be financially unsustainable. The Trust will continue to provide a range of web, mobile and telephone services for patients which complement NHS 111 and support the NHS. These services are unaffected by the discussions currently taking place.

Nick Chapman, NHS Direct Chief Executive said:
“We will continue to provide a safe and reliable NHS 111 service to our patients until alternative arrangements can be made by commissioners. Whatever the outcome of the discussions on the future, patients will remain the central focus of our efforts, together with protecting our staff who work on NHS 111 to ensure that the service will continue to benefit from their skills and experience.”

I would suggest anyone using NHS 111 for advice should ask the call operator for his or her medical qualifications and quiz her or him about the source of the information. If unsatisfied demand to speak to someone who has medical qualifications, because for every call made to NHS 111 the private owners are making money out of you as a taxpayer. Otherwise be wary of using the service at all.

First charges in Richmond paedophile ring scandal

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Two people were charged last night by the Met Police after authorisation by the Crown Prosecution Service in the Operation Fernbridge investigation.

John Stingemore,now 71 and the former deputy manager of Grafton Close children’s home was charged with eight counts of indecent assault, one charge of conspiracy with others unknown to commit buggery and two charges of taking indecent images of a child .

Father Tony McSweeney, aged 66,then a trainee Roman Catholic priest was charged with three counts of indecent assault, three counts of making indecent images of children,one charge of taking an indecent image of a child and a charge of possessing indecent images of children.

An updated report is on the Exaro News website.

The assaults involve seven children aged between nine and fifteen in the 1970s and 1980s. Both accused will appear before Westminster magistrates court in September.

Police are continuing their investigation into Elm Guest House,Barnes where it is alleged that boys were sexually assaulted by VIPs. The manager of the guest house, Harry Kasir, was recently arrested by the Met police, for having indecent images of children on his computer.

For legal reasons it is not possible to make any further comment because of the pending trial – a point made by the CPS in a blog statement today.

However as Richmond Council are not on trial I think a number of Conservative and Liberal Democrat councillors and former councillors in that borough have a lot of questions to answer .They all repeatedly denied to me that they knew anything about  any child sexual abuse in that borough. Without my original source none of this would have been reinvestigated by the police.

Crosby Textor reaction: You’re just a two bit blog

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managing director and business partner of Lynton Crosby

managing director and business partner of Lynton Crosby

Swift  and arrogant reaction to a rather critical piece today on Lynton Crosby’s  forthcoming libel action in Australia against Labor defence material minister, Mike Kelly.

A splendid exchange between Tom Watson and Mark Textor on Twitter followed publication.

  2. .@tom_watson pity about gross factual errors herein. Quoting 2 bit blogs now Tom? Poor old thing. Nite!

    3:04 PM – 21 Jul 13 ·

  3. @markatextor Oh, and if you don’t know the author of the blog, he’s @davidhencke. He’s very well known in the UK. Have a nice day now.

  4. @tom_watson @davidhencke couldn’t even get the name right. Lolz!

     3:11 PM – 21 Jul 13 ·
    Tweet text

  5. @markatextor I’ll let you get some sleep. It sounds like you need it.

Evidently Mark Textor’s sole objection to the piece was an error I made – which I am happy to apologise and have already corrected – mispelling his name –  substituting an e for an o.

The managing director modestly describes himself on the Crosby Textor website “As Australia ‘s most successful pollster and campaign strategist, Mark Textor is acknowledged as the most astute judge of public sentiment in Australia today.”

Indeed he may well be but I hope his clients who pay him millions get better advice than he gives himself. All I would say is beware of two bit blogs they sometimes can bite.

Will Lynton Crosby be downed by a man who felled a Somali warlord?

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Official Australian Government portrait of Mike Kelly MP, defence materials minister and twitter libel fighter

Official Australian Government portrait of Mike Kelly MP.

A perfect storm is gathering for David Cameron in the autumn. His Downing Street spin doctor friend Andy Coulson and Rupert Murdoch’s favourite News International employee, Rebekah Brooks, are facing trial for alleged phone hacking .Now Lynton Crosby, his Tory election strategist, looks likely to be embroiled in a libel action in Australia while the country is engulfed in an election campaign.

The two cases will overlap and will mean a very interesting examination of Crosby and partner Mark Textor’s election disputed ” push  polling” techniques to denigrate Labor opponents and might well provide a useful insight into how Crosby will try to get Cameron re-elected.

The case has been bought by Crosby and Textor against a Labor minister, Mike Kelly for tweeting as the Sydney Morning Herald  reported “”always grate [sic] to hear moralizing from Crosby, Textor, Steal and Gnash. The mob who introduced push polling to Aus.” This led to a libel suit on the grounds that it damaged their business and ” push polling ” is meant to be illegal in Australia. They also deny doing it.

They seek aggravated damages because they say Dr Kelly failed to apologise, used sensational language and published the tweet knowing it was false, or with reckless indifference to its truth or falsity.

But what is really interesting is the man Crosby is fighting. He is not the guy  you might think is an obvious Labor or Labour politician.

No the defence materials minister is something else. Crosby is taking on an Australian military hero – a rare case of a soldier turned politician. He has a  decorated military record. He has worked with the UN peacekeepers in Timor and hostage rescue in Kenya.

He was involved in the legal prosecution of Saddam Hussein and the execution of a Somali warlord after he was convicted of 31 murders. He also served with the International Red Cross in Bosnia.

The warlord  Hussan Gutaale Abdul  had attacked and killed 16 aid workers and repeatedly driven an armoured car into emaciated refugees awaiting food distribution He was arrested by an Australian patrol, held in a cage at Baidoa airport and later flown to Mogadishu to be held by US forces. He was found guilty of 31 counts of murder.

When the death penalty was pronounced  Gutaale physically attacked Kelly and Kelly wrestled him along the road to his place of execution.

For his bravery,Kelly became a Member of the Order of Australia for ” exceptional service or performance of duty”

Kelly told the Sydney Daily Telegraph :

“There was quite a bit of scuffling. I got attacked. He had always threatened he was going to take me with him if he went down. He jumped on me in the court room. I had to use my rifle to subdue him by buttstroking.”

He said a price was put on his head as a result of his work to bring warlords to justice: “There were continuous radio broadcasts calling on people to do all sorts of nasty things, to disembowel me. It wasn’t an office job.”

The cancerous Lynton crosby

The politically “cancerous ” Lynton Crosby

Crosby of course is none of these things. His previous life as a farmer’s son is sketchy but his main interest at Crosby Textor the company co founded with MarkTextor, is pretty vicious campaigning for right wing parties in Australia and the UK. Their client list is secret but the ones that have been disclosed involve tobacco, fracking and banking.

I don’t know who is going to win the libel action. But if I had a choice of buddies it would be Kelly over Crosby.

Kelly is brave and  has  been  fighting against evil dictators and war lords and trying to bring peace and stability to the world. Indeed he might deserve a place in the Imperial War Museum in Lord Ashcroft’s  roll call of military heroes.

Crosby seems to be solely motivated by money and is filling his boots with gold from a product that will  spread cancer world wide. No wonder David Cameron can’t give a straight answer to journalists about his involvement in dropping plain packaging for cigarettes.

Crosby is a cancer in the heart of Whitehall. He and Textor’s contribution to the world is to help increase cancer rates and damage the environment  for their own  private gain through a company that hides its clients from public view.

Murdoch eats humble pie over private comments at the Sun

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Rupert Murdoch yesterday rowed back from his private comments seen and heard by Exaro News and on this site  condemning the police, the judiciary and his admission that he knew all along about payments to police and officials.

In two letters to John Whittingdale, Tory chair of the culture, media and sport committee, and Keith Vaz, Labour chair of the home affairs committee, his strident comments became strangely muted.

The full quotes are in an updated piece on the Exaro News website and Channel Four News.

No doubt the media mogul, advised by his lawyer,realised that the leaking of his comments to arrested journalists had attracted too much attention, particularly after  the Met Police Operation Elveden  asked Exaro for a tape with his views.

Now he does not doubt the police’s professionalism and says any interpretation on his words that he knew about bribing official is ” wholly false”. This is after he called the police operation totally incompetent and said the Met Police inquiry was about ” next to nothing.”

Really. He was obviously not wanting to row back too much from the words he gave to his journalists – still complaining the investigation had taken too long and was ” disproportionate ” and admitting to raw emotion at the meeting.

But will this be  enough to get him off the hook. Will people really believe him?  It was definitely a repentant Rupe, but I suspect the humbling was only skin deep and I am not sure that it will get him entirely off the hook from the Met.

More seriously how will people in the US and Australia take this explanation. I think there is more to come.

Murdoch: I am hurt and betrayed by the leak at The Sun

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Rupert Murdoch: crying into his American beer

Rupert Murdoch: crying into his American beer

Rupert Murdoch has told  David Dinsmore the new editor of the Sun, that he has been hurt and betrayed by the leaking of his private comments to arrested journos at The Sun.

A report today on  Exaro News reveals that the man is devastated by the disclosures that he knew about the payments to officials which have now led to a string of his reporters and executives being arrested under the Met police Operation Elveden investigation.

Probably more devastating is the fact the disclosure of the audio recording has now led to the American media mogul being summoned to appear before Parliament and the police being sent the tape of his words by Exaro News. And pressure is expected in his adopted homeland the United States as the new liberated Tom Watson gets going again.

One is tempted as a fellow pensioner Rupert Murdoch to feel sympathy for the disclosure of one’s private thoughts when you reach the ripe old age of 82 and you can’t have any privacy at all.

But then one thinks of all the  distress faced by the Dowler family  after the hacking into Milly’s phone or  the feeling politicians and other celebs had when their private phones and e-mails were tapped. Perhaps the angst you are going through now might just give you a glimmer of what it is like for other people who have found themselves in this situation. There is still time to repent, Rupe!

Police arrest manager of Elm Guest House

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The former Elm Tree Guest House in Barnes Pic Courtesy: Exaro

The former Elm Tree Guest House in Barnes, south west London Pic courtesy: Exaro

Harry Kasir, the former manager of the  Elm Guest House  where it is alleged that young boys were sexually assaulted by VIPs, and politicians in the early 1980s, was arrested by the Met Police Paedophile Unit  yesterday.

The full story is on the Exaro News website. It is a significant development by Operation Fernbridge, which has already arrested and bailed two other people in connection with the 1980s scandal. They are John Stingemore, who ran Grafton Close, the Richmond Council children’s home, where it is alleged boys in council care were taken to Elm Guest House in Barnes. The other arrested person, Father Tony McSweeney,is a Roman Catholic priest.

The Met Police in a statement confirming the arrest  but not naming Mr Kasir, aged 69, said he had been detained on suspicion of having indecent pictures of children, He was bailed until September.

Previous stories on this site on Mr Kasir are  (https://davidhencke.wordpress.com/2013/02/20/will-elm-guest-house-man-quit-britain/) and ( https://davidhencke.wordpress.com/2013/01/20/police-raid-home-of-former-gay-guest-house-contact-in-paedophile-investigation/).