This entry was posted on
Monday, May 16th, 2011 at
2:37 pm and is filed
under Tories! Tories! Tories!.

Let’s begin by giving Nadine Dorries the benefit of the doubt to the extent of assuming (a) at some stage she actually believed material published by me amounted to harassment, and (b) she was foolish enough to believe anything said by Iain Dale or Dominic Wightman on this subject.

Bedfordshire Police have looked at everything I have blogged and tweeted and videoed about Nadine Dorries. There’s quite a lot more of it now than there was back when blogging ‘expert’ Iain Dale first described it as my “stalking” the woman, but Bedfordshire Police have looked at it even at its current level and they do not regard it to be stalking (especially as it involves no form of physical pursuit), and they do not regard it to be harassment, plus they have not seen anything in it that I might need to be warned about. Iain Dale dares to imply otherwise, for reasons that are easily guessed at.

I’m likely to go into the specifics of Dorries’ complaint about the Flitwick event in a later post (especially if she attempts to rest a charge of stalking on her interpretation of that event), but for this post it is mainly relevant that Dorries followed up on an initial July 2010 letter about the Flitwick event by presenting to police a series of passages from articles by Dominic Wightman. My position on Wightman is clear; he is a liar and a conman, and he has sought to interfere with my personal life by portraying me as a paedophile, an ally of religious extremists, and a stalker. I am none of these things.

So, going back to May 2010, assuming that Dorries initially acts with no malice and is merely operating on bad intel/advice (most likely from her ill-informed mates at this stage), she sees me at the Flitwick event, thinking whatever it is that she’s thinking, and she becomes understandably upset. Those few remaining supporters of Dorries’ position may not understand that I totally get this. However, Dorries loses all sympathy and surrenders any moral authority from the moment she claims a police investigation is in progress, especially if she does so knowing that she hasn’t even filed a valid complaint with police yet. Even if she had called any police force at any stage before the Flitwick event (there’s no evidence of it), it would have been explained to her each time she tried that the material she complained about did not constitute harassment. Yet she continued to pretend otherwise (or, worse, claimed to have made a complaint when no complaint was made).

In any case, Dorries refused to retract this entirely false claim and instead went on to build on it. Most often when asked about allegations published on my website, Dorries has repeatedly put it about in that I have a past record for stalking MPs, that I had been following her around to some extent, and that police subsequently regarded me to be a genuine threat to her safety. There are variations between what she specifically claims in what political/media circles and when, but the primary accusation/implication remains the same, and it’s a barren and unforgivable lie.

Worse, Dorries was advised that someone had been publishing my home address alongside the claim that I stalked her. She was also informed that when challenged at a public event this person claimed to be acting in this way on her behalf. Dorries responded by heavily implying that she had forwarded relevant email(s) from this man to police. She later claimed that what she really meant was she had forwarded email from me to police (i.e. and complained about my conduct instead), but there’s no record of her having done this, either.

Nadine Dorries has been assured by police that I represent no threat to her. So why does she continue to stand by what she has published/broadcast, especially when she knows about the people out there who use her allegations to intimidate me and scare the crap out of my family?

Further, why does she continue to pretend that she was advised by police to disguise her movements from me and the three other stalkers she claims are out there? She cannot now claim she was talking about these other stalkers, because even if I couldn’t identify the people she refers to in this vague accusation (I can) she has obviously positioned me as the ‘lead’ stalker, which reveals the entire claim to be a sham. Dorries portrays me as the very worst of her perceived stalkers, but Bedfordshire Police have no complaint to make about my treatment of Dorries, and I could find no record of any similar complaint about me to the London Metropolitan Police, not even through officers stationed in the House of Commons.

I am often accused of being wordy, so I wish to be as succinct as possible about the following central point:

Nadine Dorries has been making most if not all of this ‘stalking’ nonsense up, and it is well past time for her to stop.

She can’t produce any evidence to support it, and the truth behind these deliberately vague allegations about me and others is that she cannot handle criticism or even a fair debate, and instead immediately walls these dangers off as “abuse”, “harassment” or even “stalking”, possibly not just as an excuse for avoiding things like contradictory evidence, but also in instinctive defence of her own beliefs, which she has invested a LOT in by this stage.

Dorries may find it a hard reality to accept, but this is the reality of it:

Bedfordshire Police have looked at what I’ve published about her, and were provided with a copy of every email I’d ever sent to her. It’s not harassment. It doesn’t even rate a warning. I could keep it up for years and never fall on the wrong side of the law. I could also be a lot more unfair about it than most of her mates are, but that’s not the way I do things.

What Dorries calls ‘harassment’ is not harassment. Also, when she says ‘stalking’ she often means ‘harassment’, but that is not to say that she hasn’t also been deliberately claiming/implying that she has been followed around; she’s been doing plenty of that, but the only material I have seen that comes anywhere near maybe justifying it involves her story about a newspaper person who took a picture once, and some claim about a burglary where a door was taken off the hinges and some files were got at. Allegedly.

It doesn’t amount to much. It certainly doesn’t support what she’s been putting about locally and in political/media circles. Keeping this in mind, Nadine Dorries will also want to reflect on the entirely fabricated evidence that emerged during the investigation, and the courtesy I show her by not implying that she was behind it when I decline to share any further detail on the grounds of personal privacy.

When reflecting on this, she might want to stop and think seriously about the role she plays in a climate where such extraordinary falsehoods are peddled. After ‘smeargate’ especially she cannot afford to do anything but take a strong line against the tactic of using damaging falsehoods, especially the kind of mud that is designed to stick, or otherwise cause anguish or humiliation, even if it is demonstrably untrue.

In the past two years, entirely baseless and damaging claims have been made about me, and even about my children. Again, I do not wish to play Dorries’ game and imply that she is involved in the latter attempt at fabrication, but it is this element she is playing to and engaging with when she peddles damaging falsehoods of her own, especially knowing as she does how they are later used by others, including/especially Dominic Wightman.

If Nadine Dorries would like to object to anything that I have published about her, she is welcome (as she has always been) to specify anything that she regards to be incorrect or even unfair. Similarly, I challenge her to back what she has claimed about my being the worst of four stalkers with some specific evidence, or finally retract the claim.

Specifics take time, so I invite Nadine Dorries to take a couple of days to think about everything she has published on her website declaring me to be a stalker and/or otherwise guilty of harassment, and all of the stories she has spread privately about me being a danger to her or others, and how she might begin to correct the damage she has done. She might also wish to have a quiet word with Iain Dale, Anne Milton and Patrick Mercer, as she appears to have been making some extraordinary and unsupported claims on their behalf.

Finally, she might want to consider avoiding any future contact with Dominic Wightman, or any further endorsement of what he publishes under any name. If she has any doubts, I’m sure that Milton and Mercer will be delighted to explain why privately (i.e. without giving away too much about their own part in this; tribalism does have its limits).