Dominic Wightman and the psychological evaluation

Though I didn’t know it at the time, Dominic Wightman appeared in my life in early 2009 with the express intention of using me to damage the reputation of two former associates who held evidence of his previous attempts to deceive others during his doomed career as an amateur anti-terrorism operative.

He also intended to smear me as a paedophile for reasons I can only make educated guesses about at this stage.

Last month I published evidence suggesting that Wightman or a member of his immediate family had donated money to the campaign(s) to elect the Conservative MP for Guildford, Anne Milton. (I have been deeply critical of Milton in the past, and the most damaging evidence I hold against her involves her disgracefully standoffish position following a smear campaign where two of her close allies smeared an opponent as a paedophile.)

Wightman’s reaction was immediate; a single sentence amounting to “So what?” accompanied by a 1,900 word essay explaining how he had ‘won’ the fight, the battle and the argument and therefore did not need to write anything further about me.

(Please note that I regularly link to my sources as a matter of course, but I will not link to any of Wightman’s material while he continues to broadcast my home address alongside entirely untrue and downright dangerous claims about myself and others)

Anne Milton has so far refused to take a public stance on Dominic Wightman beyond some vague denials, but I fail to see how she can do so when I can now produce an email where Wightman claims quite specifically to be acting on her behalf (see below).

This correspondence comes to us from Adrian Morgan, a former contributor to the website venture Dominic Wightman moved on to after his amateur anti-terrorism initiative collapsed.

Just as he lied to me in order to convince me to attack his former associates, Wightman lied to Adrian Morgan in order to convince that man to help him in his attacks on me*.

But even when convinced by Wightman’s lies, Morgan protected himself and others by an adherence to ethics that should be obvious in this exchange, and when Morgan discovered the truth, he immediately parted ways with Wightman and made his reasons for doing so quite clear:

“In future I will not be associated with Westminster Journal while it is used as a vehicle for character attack, sock-puppetry and bile.” – Adrian Morgan (source/background)

(Psst! Wightman was desperate to have Morgan remove the word “sock puppet” from his statement, but it was the discovery of a sock puppet that was clearly Wightman’s work that alerted Morgan to Wightman’s lies. I will write about this and Wightman’s repeated use of false identities in a future post.)

Wightman’s original motives remain a mystery, and he is obviously trying to put one over on his former website partner in this exchange, but his intention to harm my reputation because of what I could reveal about him is crystal clear, as is the thinking behind his eventual decision to claim that he had ‘downed’ me by accident rather than design (highlights in bold are mine):

From: Dominic Wightman
To: Adrian Morgan
Date: Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 10:07 AM
Subject: Re: After a lot of thinking…..

I am going to do the following:

WRITTEN: 7

1. Islambase take-down (done yesterday) Author: me
2. Tamil Tigers Take-down (Friday) Author: me
3. Muslim Schools take-down (Friday) Author: me
4. Black Red alliance take-down (Friday) Author: me (help would be appreciated)
5. Spinwatch take-down (In a few weeks post thorough research) Author: us? / you
6. Tim Ireland take-down (Sunday – a day before he releases a vicious take-down on me) Author: Dan Chambers, a pal.
7. Tim Ireland psychological evaluation (Friday): author: a psychiatrist pal.

AUDIO: 5

1. Vigil repudiation piece
2. Insolvency ad Ilham Frandsen
3. On Jenvey
4. On Starkey – attack
5. On Extremism

VIDEO: 1

1. On Spinwatch and the Black-Red alliance

I am happy to do the repudiation piece on Vigil and say yes I got that partly wrong. I am also happy to be humble about the Insolvency. I am also willing to be soft on Jenvey because of his illness. My position on extremism will also be very middle of the road.

HOWEVER:

Tim Ireland lives 3 villages from me and my local supporters (including the MP) want Ireland downed. He has already admitted to me I am the sole reason he’s not written on hs blog for 2 months. He is a vicious bully and I will not sit back and get slaughtered by him without telling the world how to silence a big bully, how I did it, that I am not particularly proud of how I did it but that yes I did it. There MUST BE a mix here of eating humble pie and sabre-rattling or I will be walked over. I must also bring the right wing blog alliance on my side and to do this I need to show that I have been capable of bringing down the most famous left wing blogger, albeit temporarily, that ever existed in the UK. If I do nothing, people will make me out to be Jenvey II which I am not. A mix of showing teeth in the Starkey take-down and in the Ireland take-down will present an image of someone who is not prepared to be meddled with, who keeps his cool and who has a rare thing these days – a spine. My Wellington publish and be damned approach will work better than agreeing with this flotsam. I agree where agreement needs to be met there should be agreement made. But I am not going to lie down on this one.

My responses must be brutal and concise. Where humble the tone must be just right. I would like your help on this, Adrian, as a friend, even if you only partly agree with my strategy.

Think about it and let’s talk later. Hope your day is not as bad as you thought it might be. Sunny here in Surrey and there is a cool calm around my desk.

To war.

Best,

Dom

From: Adrian Morgan
To: Dominic Wightman
Date: Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 2:25 PM
Subject: Re: After a lot of thinking…..

I must advise a note of caution about point 7 – a “diagnosis from afar” by “a psychiatrist”.

I know such things happen – nowadays it is individuals like Raj Persaud (a plagiiaristic sore on the arse of humanity) who descend to such unprofessional behaviour.

Diagnosis from afar may be adequate for historical figures, but it is the most insidious methodology going for character assassination.

I don’t care if you have a professional psychiatrist writing it – I would not be responsible for my conduct if you did this. I would campaign for the psychiatrist to be disbarred for unethical conduct. I got my mother’s psychiatrist to abandon his role as Chairman of the Local Alzheimers Society after a vigorous letter-writing campaign.

And you cannot seriously expect to publish something like that unless such a “psychiatrist” gives his name to such a low venture – to not name your source would look like blatant media manipulation. I would openly condemn it, once it was published.

“Diagnosis from afar” was instituted by Lyndon Johnson’s backers in 1964 – a magazine in the US called FACT sent a questionnaire to 12,000 US psychiatrists to ask if they thought Republican candidate Barry Goldwater was mentally unstable.

Goldwater lost the election. The un-named psychiatrists never called in a shirink to diagnose the behaviour of Lyndon Johnson who used to curl up in a ball under his bedcovers, crying like a baby and gettig his secretary to cuddle him until he slept.

You must – now more than ever – engage in some form of ethical conduct – and journalistic integrity.

If you think Tim Ireland is unhinged – do it is an opinion piece, with supporting evidence – your emails.

To atempt to use his apparent illness as a tool to attack him, using a pseudo-professional “diagnosis” (an “argmentum ad verucundiam” or “logical falllacy of appealing to authority”) is not only unethical – it is morally repugnant.

A

Instead of challenging the evidence I retain/publish that shows he is a liar and a serial abuser of false identities, Dominic Wightman has sought to smear me as a bully and worse.

He has failed to make any of the smears he has invented stick, and has subsequently sought to build on smears begun by his fellow Tories (‘bully’, ‘mentalcase’ and ‘stalker’ have all been tried before under the guise of ‘fair comment’ by Iain Dale and a series of Total Politics employees and assorted hangers-on) and carried them on their behalf to entirely unacceptable extremes that these people continue to gain from while feigning victim status (!) and pretending they play no role in the affair.

Many of these people, including three Conservative MPs and a wannabe, continue to defend as statements of opinion that which they know Dominic Wightman asserts to be fact. They continue to do this despite knowing how harshly this lie is pressed on their behalf by Wightman and the associates he shared my home address with (highlights in bold are mine; this is from an exchange where Richard Bartholomew was threatened with violence):

Charlie Flowers
I’ll tell you something for nothing Jacques, the first Cheerleader who runs into Richard Bartholomew in real life is going to slap him upside the cheek- 1) for his 2-year harassment campaign on my friends, 2) for his aiding and abetting the 10-year campaign of the woman-stalker Tim Ireland. Tim Ireland put women in genuine fear of their lives, and Bartholomew helped him and backed him up. The man is filth.
47 minutes ago · 2 people

Deanbcfc James
they need fear instilled as they have done. that one filming the tory bird was a proper nasty stalker. ob should do something.
45 minutes ago · 1 person

(Psst! Hilariously, one supporter of Dorries seeks to justify the repeated use of the word ‘stalker’ to describe me on the basis that I use the word ‘thug’ to describe Flowers and anyone like him who seeks to intimidate others by publishing sensitive/private data such as home addresses and/or home phone numbers on their website in an attempt to intimidate critics. It’s an absurd challenge that would amount only to ‘tit for tat’ if there were anything in it.)

The latter comment is a clear reference to the lie pushed by Dorries and her supporters that my being invited to a public event constituted stalking, and I shall be returning to this topic as soon as is possible.

Today, Conservative MP Anne Milton is in a position where she will at least have to make it clear if Dominic Wightman acts on her behalf or not.

Tomorrow, more correspondence will be revealed that will put another Tory MP (Patrick Mercer) in a similarly difficult position.

[*I am unlikely to get anywhere with Wightman under civil law, as he has already avoided a debt he “did not agree with” by going bankrupt, and it is reasonable to expect that he will repeat this stunt. I won’t spell out the other stunts he could pull for fear of giving others ideas, but the fact that civil action would carry a considerable expense I could never retrieve should be enough. Addressing his antics through criminal law has proved equally difficult because he often convinces others to take risks on his behalf when he is not using false identities through foreign web providers. Again, I won’t be spelling out the details, because it does not serve the public interest to have the relevant techniques and loopholes described in any detail. Wightman has been spoken to by police about his conduct toward me and others, but pretends that the opposite is true; i.e. as if my communication with police has resulted from his complaints about me. He is even reckless enough to tell lies on behalf of specific police officers, and still his Conservative associates refuse to contradict him when he claims to be acting on their behalf.]








Posted in Tories! Tories! Tories! | 4 Comments

Right to Know: Paul Martin has a fool for a client

Right to Know presents itself as a “pro women” campaign and argues that women have a right to know about certain ‘facts’ before they proceed with an abortion. It further accuses those charged with caring for these women of deliberately keeping these ‘facts’ from them because of what they describe as a “financial vested interest”; they claim and imply quite starkly that named health care providers/organisations care more about the money they can generate from abortions than they do about the women who seek their help.

Perhaps these accusers see a financial vested interest as the only possible source of corruption, because the group Right to Know has a hidden vested interest, and is keeping that information from these same women while basing their entire argument on their right to know about such things.

The blogger Unity has already covered in detail the plan by fundamentalist-led Christian groups to reduce access to abortion through a series of seemingly secular arguments, and how Right to Know fits into this:

The document, a Powerpoint presentation produced by Dr Peter Saunders of the Christian Medical Fellowship for the Lawyers Christian Fellowship in 2007, indicates that Dorries’ current campaign and amendments are part of long-term strategy put together by an alliance of prominent anti-abortion organisations with the overall objective of securing the complete prohibition of abortion in the UK on any grounds, including rape, serious foetal abnormality and even serious risk to the life of mother. (source)

The priority of these groups is the prevention of what they see to be the murder of the foetus, not the welfare of the mother. This priority should be obvious in the stance their leading campaigners take on biblical scripture (e.g. calling the Church of England ‘cowards’ for not acknowledging as literal passages from the Bible that they claim supports the idea that life begins at conception), but these same people are also on record as whining that “if you mention God in an argument in the UK, you lose” (source/more). One assumes this is a major reason why these people have decided to keep this information from the same women they insist have a right to know about vested interests that may influence their level of care (but if this is the case, they fail to understand or refuse to acknowledge that there is a difference between not mentioning a god in your argument and lobbying secretly on their behalf).

The people running the web presence for the Right to Know campaign have been asked via Twitter if they will declare who is funding/supporting their efforts, but they have declined to answer. They have also been asked via their YouTube account to provide some scant information about who is working the pumps, but have responded by deleting every such question without answering, and disabling comments on their campaign videos so these questions might be hidden from the public.

Further, a WHOIS lookup for the relevant domain name revealed that the registrant had violated the terms of service of the provider (Nominet) in order to hide their identity; they used a generic description in place of a name (‘Web Officer’) and hid the registering address from public view with a false claim that the site was the work of a private individual.

The registrant has so far refused to update the details to bring it in line with Nominet’s requirements, but last week Nominet did exercise their right to withdraw the privacy settings on the address, which revealed the following:

Domain name:
righttoknow.org.uk

Registrant:
Web Officer

Registrant type:
UK Individual

Registrant’s address:
7 – 8 Grays Inn Square
Right to Know Campaign
London
WC1R 5JQ
United Kingdom

(Psst! To be clear: the following appears to be what Nominet revealed about the original registration details after revoking the registrant’s ‘private individual’ status – on or about 4 April – so I do not think the registrant ever intended to have this information appear in the public domain.)

At this address is the office of the law firm Cooke Matheson, part of Wellers Law Group.

None of the people I spoke to initially at Wellers Law Group knew anything about any of this until Paul Martin popped up to theorise that it had not been registered by anyone in their organisation, but had instead been registered by a client:

“We have not registered anything! I think the client, for whom we are the R/O probably did this” – Paul Martin, Wellers Law Group

[I assume R/O = registered office]

From here, a position of “all the work we do for clients is confidential” prevented Wellers Law Group from naming the client.

Here, I congratulate the registrant for the sturdiness of their final rampart… but I suspect they fail to appreciate that their identity shouldn’t be a secret at all.

Right to Know bases their entire argument on the position that women have a right to know about vested interests that influence the information they receive, and yet they do so without declaring their own interest(s).

I do not need the name of the client in order to see the extraordinary lengths they have gone to in order to disguise themselves while shouting about what lies behind Green Curtain No. 2… but I invite you to make an educated guess anyway, based on the following:

– Nadine Dorries fronted an earlier campaign to reduced the abortion limit to 20 weeks for ‘scientific’ reasons, and was recorded on camera explaining how much she relied on the work of Andrea Williams and the organisation she led; Christian Concern for our Nation. (Andrea, a self-described fundamentalist Christian, wrote the amendments that Dorries presented to the House in an attempt to pass them into law.)

– It was only after the campaign that Dorries admitted that the relevant website “was registered and created by CCFON (Christian Concern for our Nation) members, a fact not mentioned on the site” (source/context)

– In 2008, Christian Concern for our Nation hosted an event where the two key speakers were from Wellers Law Group:

CCFON screengrab

– Hosted by Andrea Williams, the event presented the speakers’ biographies as follows:

Paul Martin is a partner of Wellers, based in London and Bromley, Kent. He has recently published the Christian Charities Handbook – a guide to all things concerning the governance and management of charities. He travels widely and has a client base of both national and international organisations. Paul has considerable expertise in dealing with UK and non-resident charities as well as “not-for-profit” concerns, and is a director of two international charities.

Jane Whitfield is a Solicitor with a considerable expertise in the charity sector. She has been on The Law Society’s Wills and Equity Committee for a number of years and is a member of the Charity Law Association. She is also a Trustee of ‘Hope in the Community’, a Christian charity.

– When approached with the WHOIS data, Paul Martin initially offered “more information”, but then declined to answer any questions about his relationship with the Lawyers Christian Fellowship and Christian Concern (the shiny new face of Christian Concern for Our Nation).

Now, revealing a lobbyist as an active member of a Christian movement/group may have the potential to undermine the credibility of what they claim to be a secular argument, but that is not what destroys the argument in this instance.

What destroys the argument in this instance is that ‘Right to Know’ do not actually believe that you have a right to know; they do not offer the same transparency they demand of others, which reveals the very foundation of their argument to be a sham.

To paraphrase the only book some of these people appear to have read; it is a foolish man who builds his house upon the sand.

In fact, Nadine Dorries and her secretive fundamentalist backers will want to take a closer look at all of Chapter 7 of the book of Matthew, especially if they claim to stand by the Bible’s every word as if it is the word of God:

Matthew 7

Judging Others

1 “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

6 “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.

Ask, Seek, Knock

7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

9 “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! 12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

The Narrow and Wide Gates

13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

True and False Prophets

15 “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16 By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.

True and False Disciples

21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

The Wise and Foolish Builders

24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

28 When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, 29 because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.

(Psst! Just to save some needless shouting; I do not interpret the Bible as these people do, and I do not claim to obey its teachings… plus, I have no hidden vested interests, despite what Dorries and her supporters may imply. So I dare to judge, and have no fear of being similarly judged.)








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Nadine Dorries and the right to know (Happy birthday, information request!)

Some of you may have noticed Nadine Dorries finally following the ’20 Weeks’ campaign with her difficult second album, Right to Know (more). Just to be clear, what we are looking at here is series of cheap American pop covers (compare righttoknow.org.uk to righttoknow.org), with the only original material being a cheap re-hash of crowd-pleasing highlights including dubious arrangement of statistics into unconvincing power chords and the delightfully unconvincing disguises worn by Nadine’s fundamentalist backing group.

Last time it was the registration of the20weekscampaign.org that gave them away. This time, Dorries is pushing righttoknow.org.uk, which has been registered using the generic description ‘Web Officer’ instead of a real name, and opts to disguise further detail by incorrectly classifying the domain/site as the work of a private individual.

You have a right to know... nothing about us

Nominet have confirmed that both measures put this user in breach of their agreed Terms, and it will be interesting to see how the mystery registrant responds to a subsequent request by Nominet that they comply with the agreed rules.

One assumes the same team that maintains this site also has some role to play in the official/associated Twitter feed and YouTube channel. Requests have been sent through both of these communication channels requesting that they be clearer about who is funding/coordinating their efforts, but so far the only response has been the deletion of any such questions from the YouTube channel, and the refusal to allow any further comments.

Here I will remind you that Nadine’s latest attempt to reduce the number of abortions hinges on a demand for transparency; she contends that women have a right to know about the shadowy forces that seek to influence them without declaring an interest… while not thinking for a moment that the same might apply to her.

This is typical of Nadine Dorries, as is her distaste for the pesky little rules that she thinks only apply to little people. She is, after all, on a mission from God (more).

On 30 March 2010, I submitted an information request to the office of Nadine Dorries. It is now exactly one year later and Dorries and her staff haven’t even got around to acknowledging receipt yet. I suspect they intend to defy the request, and a complaint is with the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Since receiving the request for information her office holds on me, Dorries has made a claim that I have sent her and her staff ‘numerous offensive emails’ and other ‘vile’ and ‘abusive’ and ‘explicit’ messages. My information request should at least compel her to reveal all emails/messages sent to her office in my name, but instead she continues to pretend that no such request has been made.

I expect she will cry ‘stalker’ when the ICO case officer gets in touch; this means that she will be refusing to honour an information request on the basis of evidence she is refusing to release under that same information request.

Transparency is wonderful, isn’t it?

(Psst! Odds are good that the testimony of ‘Tanya’ comes to us via Forsaken, but Dorries will be keen to avoid any such admission, especially after her disastrous attempt to pass that group off as an established ‘pro woman’ charity. Meanwhile, apropos of nothing, I bring you shocking news of a lack of transparency in the abortion industry overseas.)

UPDATE – I’ve made a video that attempts to explain Dorries’ position a little better.

Nadine Dorries: Right to Know from Tim Ireland on Vimeo.

UPDATE (11 April) – Take a look at what turned up when Nominet revealed the address used to register this domain name.








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Jeremy Hunt approves of all sorts of odd things

CCC11-02 – Jeremy Hunt rhymes with something

The latest edition of Conservative Change Channel is (finally) out and it includes two special moments from Jeremy Hunt (recorded just prior to the 2010 General Election):

1. The first is classic Hunt. He once again brushes right over the significance of two local Conservative activists who smeared an opponent as a paedophile, as if it’s of no significance. The look on his face at the time was ‘yeah, so what… get to the point’. He has repeatedly dismissed the importance of this smear campaign and repeatedly endorsed the MP (Anne Milton) who turned a blind eye to this campaign and involved herself personally in a further smear campaign against me. Hunt’s wife once gasped in shock when hearing about it, and Hunt shushed her loudly right there in the street, lest she make the fatal mistake of expressing any kind of alarm about it.

(I often wonder what he told her after making his excuses and hurrying off, as he so often does. I doubt it was the truth.)

2. Jeremy Hunt rather rashly weasels his way out of his practice of deleting past entries from his weblog and Twitter feed by claiming he is accountable after all… but only because of measures that corrupt liars like Iain Dale and Nadine Dorries describe as ‘stalking’ (when their mates are not doing the same or worse to people they don’t like).

So over the coming days and weeks – knowing that I have the blessing of the Minister of Teh Internets – I am going to encourage others to hold their MP to account via a weblog, starting with some simple tasks you will find surprisingly manageable and effective. I even have a plan for sharing the load on some of the more specialised/work-intensive tasks (e.g. journalism, research, data analysis, etc.). I will also be making recommendations* designed to minimise the risks I’ve exposed myself to, and you certainly won’t find yourself standing alone if some scumbag fights back with lies or smears.

I ran a similar (and successful) campaign for people to blog on behalf of MPs in 2005, but we have a much busier online village now, with better tech at our disposal, and this effort is going to be a lot less forgiving; we have a whole new gang of liars in charge, and they’ve been making all sorts of promises about transparency that they probably never expected they’d have to live up to.

(*On this note; you do NOT have to be a constituent of any given MP to take part. In fact, it’s probably better if you’re not; I found myself cut off from democracy at a local level because I dared to scrutinise my MP, and I’d hate to see that happen to someone else. Take your time. Choose your target. I’ll be on deck with Lesson One shortly.)








Posted in Anne Milton, The Political Weblog Movement, Tories! Tories! Tories! | 5 Comments

Nadine Dorries and the mission from God

The following is an interview/article featuring Nadine Dorries from a 2007 edition of the Salvation Army’s War Cry.

Putting aside these deeply religious contentions, which are striking in themselves…

“I try to live my faith. Some days I fail quite miserably but I constantly try to do what Jesus would do.” – Nadine Dorries (source/PDF)

“I am not an MP for any reason other than because God wants me to be. ” – Nadine Dorries (source/PDF)

… Nadine’s contention that her previous ‘middle way’ option would put her at odds with pro-lifers is a fallacy if not a deceit; the entire campaign was conceived, written and backed by large pro-life groups whose full role Dorries has repeatedly attempted to hide from the public (detail | video) .

Second, those same groups are coordinating/enabling her latest efforts where Dorries and others are masquerading as “pro woman” campaigners seeking to protect vulnerable adults from the physical/mental harm they and other religious groups claim is a common post-abortion problem… but this article/interview from 2007 makes it very clear that Dorries is driven primarily NOT by a desire to protect women, but instead a deeply religious decision to reduce the number of abortions by any means possible, even if these means appear, intially, to be at odds with the anti-abortion agenda:

“I’ve been told my Bill will get nowhere while I have pro-lifers and abortion rights people against me. But my argument is: How can anyone argue – on any grounds – that my proposal is not right. Currently there are about 600 abortions a day in the UK. I’d like to reduce that number by at least half. The public is not interested in banning abortion. Those who hold out for a complete ban have not changed the law – they have not saved a single life. To me, saving some lives is better than saving no lives at all. I hope pro-lifers will come to share my view that some progress is better than no progress. ” – Nadine Dorries (source/PDF)

The full text of the interview/article appears below. It also includes some detail about her living arrangements at the time that will raise an informed eyebrow or two. She also repeats her dumbfounding contention that she is not accountable to those who live outside her constituency, even while she is campaigning to restrict their access to appropriate medical care.

War Cry, image of article

MP call for lower abortion time limit

Salvation Army ‘War Cry’ #6182, 2 June 2007 (source/PDF)

HERE’S one for A Question of Sport: Which MP’s grandfather was a co-founder of Everton Football Club? Answer: Liverpool-born Nadine Dorries, Conservative MP for Mid-Bedfordshire.

‘My grandfather, George Bargery, founded St Domingo’s FC which became Everton FC,’ she says as we talk in her Westminster office. ‘Everton’s first game in the newly formed Football League was against Accrington. My grandad was the Everton goalie. He had a good game and became quite a local hero.’

That game was played on 8 September 1888 – the opening day of the season. It was played not at Goodison but at Anfield, which is today home of mighty Liverpool. So, the most important question to ask of any Scouser: Red or Blue? Liverpool or Liverpool Reserves?

‘Red, definitely,’ says Nadine. ‘I suppose because of my grandfather I should support Everton, but I can’t just stop supporting my team. I couldn’t swap to Everton any more than I could cross the floor of the House of Commons.’ Nadine grew up on the Breck Road, a long kick from the Kop.

‘On match days I used to earn 2/6 looking after people’s cars,’ she says. ‘Money was very tight, so the football money helped. The family food bill was 7/6 and my father was ill from when I was very young. I had an impoverished childhood. I had to borrow shoes from a friend to go to school and one year my winter coat came from church or The Salvation Army.’

Nadine started her working life as a nurse in the Royal Liverpool Hospital. She then moved to Zambia with her husband, and took over the running of a community school.

‘I didn’t go to Zambia with that intent,’ she says, ‘but the woman who was running the school died of malaria. She was pregnant and wouldn’t take anti-malaria pills because of the risk of inducing a miscarriage. In the event mother and baby died. It was very sad. I just happened to be there so I took over the running of the school.’

Nadine returned to England and became managing director of a company. From 1998 to 1999 she was a director of BUPA.

She fought her first general election in 2001 in the Greater Manchester seat of Hazel Grove. But it wasn’t until 2005 that she entered Parliament.

How big a career change is it to move from being a nurse to being an MP?

‘It’s not such a big change, actually. It might sound corny but it’s about caring for other people. In that sense it’s just a different aspect of what I’ve done throughout my working life.’

Nadine says she finds it difficult to pin down the moment she decided to become an MP. In fact, it is easier for her to identify a point which almost led her not to become an MP.

‘I was in church one Sunday around Easter when I said to God that maybe I should give up on the idea of being an MP. In 2001 I’d fought a difficult seat. I was bringing up children and was busy. I thought I had missed the boat. Maybe I’d got completely the wrong idea of what I should be doing.

‘I was struggling. One minute I’d tell myself to stay calm because something would work out for me, the next I’d panic and think it wasn’t going to happen.

‘I can still recall the chair I was sitting in. I remember looking at the cross and saying to God; “I’ve obviously got the wrong idea. It’s in your hands now.”

‘I walked out of church feeling relieved. I’d given up chasing something I’d been after for years. Then a few days later I got a phone call to tell me to keep a certain date free. I went along to a selection meeting as invited, was chosen over 17 other candidates and within six weeks of that day in church I was elected to Westminster.’

Two years on from that election victory, what is it like being a working mum who is an MP?

‘The hardest thing to deal with is the long Westminster hours. My two oldest girls are at university and my 15-year-old stays with her dad from Monday mornings until Thursday nights when I get back home. While male MPs might put their feet up when they get home, I go home to pick up my other full-time job – being Mum.

‘MOST of the time the girls are great about it but there are times when pressures build up. I’m accountable to 77,000 constituents, to my local Conservative Association, to the whips’ office and to the chamber of the House of Commons. Most of all I’m accountable to my daughters.

‘Even though I try to put them on the top of the pile, sometimes the phone rings, somebody wants me to do something and I can’t give them the time I’d planned to. It gets a bit tricky balancing family and work.

‘We need more women in Parliament. Women make up 52 per cent of the electorate and need representing. Being an MP is twice as difficult for a woman as it is for a man. Westminster is a harsh, unfriendly environment. Many women MPs retreat into being constituency MPs rather than parliamentarians.’

What makes that constant juggling of time, energy and demands worthwhile?

‘I feel I’ve built a really good relationship with my constituents. Before I became an MP I didn’t realise the scale of problems some people face. Being able to help people through such problems is immensely rewarding. I love being in Parliament. I love taking part in debates. But for me it is the people I represent who come first.’

As well as representing the people of Mid-Bedfordshire, Nadine is sponsoring the Termination of Pregnancy Bill to reduce the upper time limit for abortions from 24 to 20 weeks.

‘This year is the 40th anniversary of the Abortion Act, which introduced the 24-week limit,’ she says. ‘Medical technology has changed enormously in that time. For example, thanks to 4-D scanning we know that a foetus can feel pain early in pregnancy.

‘No Labour Government will ever restrict a woman’s right to an abortion. They have what is known as Emily’s List, an organisation which helps finance the campaigns of women parliamentary candidates. Only pro-choice women are eligible for funding. Even if a future vote to abolish abortion carried a party whip, the Emily’s List MPs would support a woman’s right to abortion.

‘On the pro-life side of the fence, the public takes little notice of those who want to abolish abortion. They are dismissed as extremists. If I were to argue that all abortions should be banned, the ethical discussions would go round in circles because one person’s opinion is as valid as another’s.

‘My view is that the only way forward is to argue for a reduction in the time limit. I’ve heard the arguments about how it’s every woman’s right that she should be able to have an abortion. But I say it’s every baby’s right to have a life because science tells us that by 24 weeks they feel pain, they laugh, they smile, they hear and they think. There is a lot of public sympathy for the opinion that 24 weeks is too old for a foetus to be aborted.’

But doesn’t offering a middle option mean that you get caught in the crossfire between strident prochoicers and avid anti-abortionists?

‘Yes it does. I’ve been told my Bill will get nowhere while I have pro-lifers and abortion rights people against me. But my argument is: How can anyone argue – on any grounds – that my proposal is not right.

‘Currently there are about 600 abortions a day in the UK. I’d like to reduce that number by at least half. The public is not interested in banning abortion. Those who hold out for a complete ban have not changed the law – they have not saved a single life.

‘To me, saving some lives is better than saving no lives at all. I hope pro-lifers will come to share my view that some progress is better than no progress.

‘Doctors who carry out abortions are increasingly worried that they’ll deliver a live foetus, even at 20 weeks. The way babies are terminated from 20 weeks is horrendous.

‘According to Royal College guidelines, a canular is inserted through the mother’s abdominal wall into the heart of the foetus, which is given a lethal injection. Doctors wait two days to ensure that the baby is dead and then it is delivered.

‘I have seen scans of this process. It was like watching murder. I have seen the foetus moving away from the needle. It is the most heart-wrenching, awful thing to see.

‘If the public saw these images, they would be firmly in favour of reducing the age limit on abortion.’

Taking on such an emotive and explosive area as abortion is not a soft option for any MP, let alone one so new to the trade.

‘When I first started this campaign I felt under attack,’ says Nadine. ‘I had hate mail. I felt my personal world was falling apart. My faith has helped me pull through. People are praying for me – not only fellow MPs but also thousands of people across the country.

AS a child Nadine was brought up to go to church. ‘But like a lot of kids, I left the church when I was a teenager,’ she says. ‘At the time I would have described myself as a Christian but it was only about 15 years ago that I was converted through an Alpha course. I realise how shallow my belief was before my conversion.’

It was the vicar of her local church who invited Nadine along to the ten-week introductory course on Christianity.

‘My first response was to tell him I didn’t need to go,’ she says. ‘But I ended up going anyway. I suppose I was going to church without even knowing the most important aspects of Christianity – what it means and what it is about. Like many people I didn’t really know why Jesus died on the cross, how he could forgive our sins or who the Holy Spirit is. All of that was a revelation to me.’

What does Nadine’s faith give her?

‘My faith tells me who I am. It tells me why I am here. It tells me who is with me while I am pursuing my goals. I sometimes think if I didn’t have my faith, who would I be? How would I live my life?

‘My faith constantly gives me my reference point. It keeps me grounded. I am not an MP for any reason other than because God wants me to be. There is nothing I did that got me here; it is what God did. There is nothing amazing or special about me, I am just a conduit for God to use.’

And who is Jesus to Nadine?

‘Jesus is alive with me. I have my times of wondering – of not quite sensing his presence. I don’t know everything. I can’t do everything. And I can’t achieve anything in my own strength.

‘I need guidance. I need protection – and so does my family. I pray a lot for these things. ‘I try to live my faith. Some days I fail quite miserably but I constantly try to do what Jesus would do.’

And whether a Scouser comes from the red or the blue side of Liverpool, they’ll tell you one thing for sure: God loves a trier.

Perhaps God exists, and perhaps he/she does love a trier… but their alleged position on liars isn’t quite so favourable.

Nadine Dorries is a liar and her latest campaign has a dirty great lie at its heart.

Once again, I’m calling her out in front of her constituents, in front of her supporters, and in front of her god.

UPDATE – Stuart Wood made a perfectly reasonable request for a picture of Nadine Dorries on a mission from God, and here it is (image also posted to B3ta):

Nadine Dorries on a mission from God








Posted in Christ..., Tories! Tories! Tories! | 6 Comments

Anne Milton: out of the blue

In early 2009, a man appeared out of nowhere offering me dirt on some of his former colleagues. One of those former colleagues later reported* that this same person approached them at the same time, first warning them that I was a convicted paedophile who had escaped justice, and then furnishing them with my home address; he was clearly trying to set one party against the other (in the most damaging and dangerous way) from the outset.

(He currently pretends that he acts in the way he does because he claims I ‘betrayed’ him over an article reporting his past conduct as – don’t laugh – an amateur anti-terrorism operative.)

From the very beginning and throughout our conversations, this person offered repeated assurances – often apropos of nothing – that he was nothing to do with Anne Milton (a local Tory MP of whom I have been critical). At one stage, he offered to operate as a ‘peace broker’ between us, and he would also speak in ways that gave a very clear impression that he was a regular at local Tory fundraising events, and there is certainly no denying the role his family have played in local Conservative politics (for generations).

Now, I can understand this person’s motive for wanting to use someone in my position to get at his former colleagues, but as random as the universe is, I do not think it safe to assume that he would do something so serious as falsely accuse a person of paedophilia on a mere whim.

In fact, I suspect the decision to smear me as a paedophile specifically was entirely calculated, and planned in response to the matter a the heart of my dispute with Milton; my proving that her activists smeared an opponent as a paedophile, and her deep embarrassment at being entirely unable to respond to that now she has turned a blind eye to it for years.

So, even though this person has made none-too-subtle threats about turning his attentions on my family should I dare to raise the names of any of his relatives, I asked Anne Milton about her relationship with this man, and after she (eventually) gave an infuriatingly vague answer, I went on to ask if this person or his blood relative(s) had donated any money to her past or present election campaigns.

It took me a month to get this ‘answer’ out of her:

“The law sets out which donations are public and private and I can’t tell you who made a private donation.” – Anne Milton

What Anne Milton refers to here is the law that states she must declare donations over a certain amount**. It does not state that all amounts under this must remain private, but this is exactly what Milton implies.

However, even if Milton were facing genuine legal/confidentiality difficulty, she would have no problem answering my question if the answer put her in the clear… and it is here that Jeremy Hunt (another local Tory MP) finally makes himself useful for the first time.

I asked Jeremy Hunt the same question, and this was his answer:

“In regard to the other persons you name, I have checked with my agent in South West Surrey as with all donations we have adhered to the rules and regulations laid out by the electoral commission. Personally both these individuals are unknown to me and checking the register they have not donated money to my campaign.” – Jeremy Hunt

Until Anne Milton can come forward with an equally clear answer about donations and a clearer answer about her relationship with the person who smeared me as a paedophile and broadcast my home address (with the unmistakeable intention of having one appear alongside the other), the dark shadows of uncertainly she leaves are only going to foster suspicions that this person acted (at least in part) on her behalf.

Further, if this is the case, after her ‘stalker’ outburst (that she denies, despite the evidence) Milton has a case to answer even if this person acted initially without her knowledge, and she certainly needs to take a position now this person is boldly repeating false accusations made by her and claiming the endorsement of local Conservatives.

Instead, Anne Milton refuses to make a clear public statement about her relationship with this man, and even pretends that the law prevents her from asking a direct question about campaign donations from this person and/or his family.

One might expect this kind of behaviour from a wild-eyed back bencher, but Anne Milton manages to get away with this while maintaining a position in David Cameron’s cabinet.

(*Some of this relies in part on the testimony of a particularly vulnerable individual, but they and another party have provided enough circumstantial evidence to support, at least, their contention that this person shared my address with them. They could not possibly have known, for example, the date of a crucial meeting, which corresponds neatly with a relevant email they shared. In any case, the person I accuse of engineering a paedophile smear against me has repeated the same accusation and worse on their site, and published details about my home address on that same site… cleverly disguised in a story where he describes taking locals on a guided tour of my street so they might see the home of ‘stalker’. This person has issued a belated denial about the paedo-smears, but has recently also denied ever having been in my street. In other words; any way you slice it, he’s a liar, or very, very confused about what he did or did not do.)

(**”Under Electoral Commission rules, only gifts totalling £7,500 or more for a central party, or £1,500 for a constituency association, have to be declared… The thresholds increased earlier this year from £5,000 and £1,000 respectively.” – BBC, 23 August 2010 )








Posted in Anne Milton, Tories! Tories! Tories! | 2 Comments

Nadine Dorries: the missing punchline

[Please be aware that this post contains a graphic image of in utero surgery. If you are so inclined you can learn more about the original here. ‘NSFW’ may not be the proper tag, but please do approach the ‘Hand of Hope’ with similar caution if linking to it and/or to this post; not everyone has a stomach for surgery.]

If you’re new here, this is probably your best introduction to Nadine Dorries, as this single matter not only shows Nadine at her very best medically, but also serves as an excellent introduction to the type of conduct that makes her unfit to serve as a Member of Parliament.

I’ll let Nadine introduce herself, and then we’ll crack on.

“I am aware that in laying down this amendment there will be those who will attempt to misrepresent my position. The fact is that I am pro-woman. ” – Nadine Dorries (source | mirror)

The great sage Dorries (who has foretold stabbings, you know) predicts she is about to be ‘misrepresented’. Tragically, she may actually believe this.

She then declares herself ‘pro-woman’ in order to distinguish herself from deeply religious people (i.e. people like her secretive backers), much like she declared the ‘charity’ Forsaken to be “pro women” (i.e. and not “pro life”) in the House of Commons. This group turned out to have a deeply religious agenda. Dorries’ only answer to this at the time (and since); a series of outright lies about the way I dared to scrutinise this claim and what she had clearly implied about the organisation’s size, credibility, and charity status.

Back to Nadine, the day after:

“As I predicted, those who wish to mis represent my position on abortion came out yesterday in an attempt to both discredit me and therefore undermine both the issue itself and the case of vulnerable women” – Nadine Dorries (source | mirror)

Classy the way she shields herself with vulnerable women, isn’t it?

That aside, if anybody had ‘mis represented’ her position on abortion, she’d be sure to challenge their fictions head-on, right?

Well, if you’re new here, watch and learn:

“I have never claimed a baby ‘punched’ it’s way out of the womb” – Nadine Dorries (source | mirror)

Dorries first published this as a comment under the original article at ConservativeHome. Soon after I responded, the site owner Tim Montgomerie (staunch Christian and close friend of Dorries) deleted my comment that consisted of (a) this recent claim from Dorries and (b) this earlier claim by Dorries on her website which clearly contradicts her;

“My second point is look at the tear in the uterus. See how jiggered it is just above the hand; and yet the rest of the surgically incised openings are controlled and neat. This is, in all likelihood, because the hand unexpectedly thrust out.” – Nadine Dorries (source | mirror | dumbfounded blogger 1 | dumbfounded blogger 2)

[MINI-UPDATE – Psst! After deleting my comment, Tim Montgomerie had the cheek to publish a comment that implied my content (that only he could see) was somehow “nasty” or even abusive. He then deleted that, but threatened me with more of the same treatment should I dare to submit a comment to his site again. What a nice man.]

Later, Tim Montgomerie removed Nadine’s comment, subsequently erasing the responses by two other people challenging her assertion in exactly the same way (i.e. by linking to this same text):

Jake L said in reply to Nadine Dorries MP…

[“I have never claimed a baby ‘punched’ it’s way out of the womb”]

Yes you have.

http://awurl.com/KsCAUoaAR#first_awesome_highlight

(March 07, 2011 at 16:38)

Dave Cross said in reply to Nadine Dorries MP…

“I have never claimed a baby ‘punched’ it’s way out of the womb”

It is, however, easy to see how people might think that you have claimed exactly that. See http://awurl.com/KsCAUoaAR#first_awesome_highlight

(March 07, 2011 at 16:49)

Then, Dorries posted the text of this same comment on her ‘blog’, where no comments from readers are allowed, thus allowing her to maintain that she never claimed a foetus had punched its way out of the womb without fear of contradiction.

(Incidentally, the original ban on comments on Dorries’ site dates back to… the incident where Dorries claimed a foetus punched its way out of the womb.)

If anybody has misrepresented her position about anything, then let’s have Dorries challenge those misrepresentations, not delete or ignore them.

What is her position, exactly? That she didn’t say ‘punched’ specifically? Was it more of a jab, then? Or a karate chop?

Or does she instead maintain that she said a foetus did this, and not a baby? Somehow, I doubt she would make this distinction. Dorries is on record as being fiercely defensive of certain literal interpretations of Bible passages supporting the concept that life begins at conception (a deeply religious view approaching if not stepping over the line into fundamentalism that makes every abortion a murder in the eyes of most if not all of her closest supporters… not that these people can afford to admit it in public while campaigning on abortion).

In short, if her position has been misrepresented on this, then Nadine Dorries has entirely failed to explain how this is being done.

That said, the last incident where I saw her rise publicly to any challenge like this was on Twitter in April of 2010, and she did offer this at the time:

“It was an in utero op and pictured during surgery. Interesting that not one reputable pro-choice group denies the authenticity.” – Nadine Dorries (source deleted, see screen capture below)

screen capture of preceding quote

Let’s put the matter of who did or did not deny its authenticity to one side, and let Dorries have this one. (In other words; let’s pretend that she is not merely pretending that this never happened.)

Instead, let’s look at what she asks us to take into consideration when we judge her account of that event.

Yes, it was an “in utero (operation)”, and I’ve acknowledged this myself…

“I’ve heard some MPs talk bullshit in my time, but the idea that a 21-week-old foetus could punch its way out of the womb (with or without a starting incision) reached new heights for me.” – Me, also in April 2010

… but the best that can be said for Dorries, if we are to accept that the 21-week-old foetus acted independently in this way at all, is that she was saying that the doctor gave the ickle foetus a bit of a head-start with his scalpel.

What Dorries clearly proposes here is that the “jiggered” edges resulted from the foetus thrusting its arm out with such force that it tore human flesh (please excuse the unsavoury mental image, and the image that follows):

screen capture of the Hand of Hope image and accompanying text by Dorries

In layman’s terms, she maintained that a 21-week-old foetus had punched its way out of the uterus, or ‘womb’ as it is more commonly known. It does not matter is she didn’t use the exact word ‘punched’ or if she argues that the foetus had a head-start or not; her claim that it happened at all is as absurd and as insulting to the intelligence as her implication that the surgeon changed his story because he feared the wrath of violent pro-abortionists.

This is why you should not listen to Nadine Dorries about anything of a medical nature, because if she isn’t a liar, or an idiot, or delusional, then she’s a lying, delusional idiot.

These are not just “bad words” or some mere abuse/insults I throw around lightly. I use these words quite deliberately and entirely accurately:

liar
(n.)
a person who tells lies,

lie
(n.)
1. an untrue statement deliberately used to mislead,
2. something that is deliberately intended to deceive,

delusional
(adj.)
suffering from or prone to belief in something that is not true,

idiot
(n.)
1. a foolish or senseless person,
[synonyms: fool, half-wit; imbecile; dolt, dunce, numbskull]

I also say the following knowing that my words could not be more damaging to someone campaigning on the subject of abortion; Nadine Dorries is completely ignorant of relevant medical procedures, and uses unsubstantiated anecdotes, distorted/falsified statistics, and outright lies to support the campaigns she supports that are unquestionably engineered by religious groups and conceived quite deliberately to restrict a woman’s right to govern her own body.

On the latter point, what Nadine Dorries offers in her current round of proposed changes to abortion law is profoundly dishonest to begin with; it amounts to the ‘choice’ to be legally compelled to be ‘informed’ by people with a hidden religious agenda. Meanwhile, Dorries issues dark whispers about the profit motive of care providers who conduct abortions and portrays them as the primary if not sole opponents to what she proposes.

Well, I oppose what she proposes, but primarily I object to the absurd lies she has used to push her anti-abortion campaigns, and the malicious lies she has aimed at critics who have dared to challenge her. It is what brought me to her attention, and the only thing that has really surprised me about her response to my challenges is how inexcusably childish, malicious and dangerous her resulting accusations have become, and how much the Conservative Party have let her get away with… especially after they defended this same MP against a proposed smear campaign while declaring that there is no place for this kind of behaviour in politics.

Did Nadine Dorries claim that a 21-week-old foetus punched its way out of a womb? Yes, she did. She did exactly that. And, incredibly, that’s not the worst of it.

Nadine Dorries has no credible role to play in the abortion debate. She’s lucky she’s still an MP.








Posted in Tories! Tories! Tories! | 1 Comment

Boris Johnson and the dangerous Tory smear campaign

I was producing/administrating Boris Johnson’s weblog at the time Anne Milton’s activists were smearing an opponent as a paedophile, but I went out of my way to avoid jeopardising the all-too-rare example of a Conservative MP subjecting themselves to a little public scrutiny (most of them still treat it like it’s kryptonite; a point I plan to return to, with gusto, shortly).

Hell, I even bit my tongue when Boris jovially referenced Anne Milton during a meeting and described the relevant dispute as a “personal disagreement”.

I was a fool. I should have known this effort was pointless (Boris essentially shunned his blog and the loyal supporters running it from the moment he was elected mayor), and I should have pressed him on this matter.

In fact, I’ve often wondered how things would have turned out if I used my position to press the point with Boris Johnson at the time, and now I’ve got a pretty good idea because, as the following correspondence reveals, someone else took it up with Boris Johnson at the time (after his public endorsement of Anne Milton) and he took no discernable action.

As in the previous post, this correspondence has been edited ONLY to avoid publicising the target of the smear and revealing the name of the person complaining about it, with the latter measure being necessary to avoid potential reprisals from those (still active) supporters of Milton’s who do things like broadcast my home address in revenge attacks while repeating her accusation of stalking (while this ‘wonderful’ MP pretends it’s none of her concern):

From: Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Fri 2/2/2007 5:34 PM
To: johnsonb@parliament.uk
Subject: University of Surrey

Dear Boris,

I was present at your appearence at the University of Surrey Students’ Union – thank you for making the short journey from London. As someone interested in politics – though certainly not of your colour – it was refreshing to see that you attracted plenty of people.

I’m afraid I have to take exception with your comments about Anne Milton. She is far from being a wonderful MP ‘fighting crime on the streets’. She’s is both ineffective and profoundly dishonest. Two Conservative local activists, who will be standing in the local elections, and who were sitting in the front row at your appearence, have been involved in dirty campaign involving the setting up of a libellous blog to spread viscious rumours about a political opponent [snip]. This has been exposed by Tim Ireland – the person who built your weblog – and David Cameron’s office has been made aware. You can read the details at Tim’s site by following the links in this article: [link snipped] Anne Milton has known about this campaign for a substantial amount of time and, by not reacting to it, she has provided her tacit support to such revolting measures. Today, you provided the bumbling yet ever-so-lovable face of the Tory party and you clearly captivated the students – this is no doubt due to your affable nature. It is also incredibly dangerous. Dirty campaigns such as this one, which are supported by your MPs and even your leadership, show that the Conservative party is still insidious to its core. It truly deserves the ‘nasty party’ label. I’m disappointed that you extended your support to Anne Milton today, though I appreciate that you were probably unaware of what has been going on in Guildford. If, as I hope you do, you find this repulsive, then please have a word in David Cameron’s ear and get him to make it clear that such actions won’t be tolerated.

Thanks,

Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxxx

——————-

From: Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: 11 February 2007 23:02
To: JOHNSON, Boris
Subject: FW: University of Surrey

Dear Boris,

I sent this email just over a week ago and have not yet received a reply. I’m re-sending it because it’s possible that it got lost in my university’s email system.

Best wishes,

Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxxx

——————-

From: JOHNSON, Boris [JOHNSONB@parliament.uk]
Sent: Mon 2/12/2007 11:15 AM
To: Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: University of Surrey

Boris Johnson notes your comments.

Frances Banks
Boris Johnson’s office

——————-

From: Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: 05 March 2007 17:48
To: JOHNSON, Boris
Subject: RE: University of Surrey

As comforting as that is, it’s now over a month since my original email and the blog in question is still live and being updated with further libellous content. You, David Cameron, Anne Milton and the Guildford Conservative Association are all aware of this and have been for some time, yet it continues. When will it stop? Will it take vigilante action on the person targeted for the Conservative Party to say enough is enough? Everyone is aware how emotive child abuse is and unfounded accusations like this put someone in potential danger – I’m sure you remember the incident of a paediatrician being set upon by local do-gooders.

Take the opportunity to distance yourself from such sick-minded members of the Tory party and my local MP who continues her shameful tacit support of this person.

Kind regards,

Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxxx

——————-

From: JOHNSON, Boris [JOHNSONB@parliament.uk]
Sent: Tue 3/6/2007 10:21 AM
To: Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: University of Surrey

Thank you: I write to acknowledge your email.

Frances Banks
Boris Johnson’s office
——————-

From: Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Sun 18/03/2007 11:32
To: JOHNSON, Boris
Cc: camerond@parliament.uk; miltona@parliament.uk
Subject: RE: University of Surrey

I have copied in David Cameron and Anne Milton to this email so they are aware of this exchange – not that they haven’t been aware for months but nevermind. The more awareness there is, the less the Conservative party will be able to wriggle out of it when they decided actually to do something.

The weblog is still live. It is still being updated. The person in question remains a candidate at the local elections. That’s Conservative action.

Regards,

Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxxx

——————-

From: Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Sun 4/8/2007 2:00 PM
To: johnsonb@parliament.uk
Cc: camerond@parliament.uk; miltona@parliament.uk
Subject: FW: University of Surrey

You people really, really don’t care, do you?

——————-

From: Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Sat 4/21/2007 3:38 PM
To: johnsonb@parliament.uk
Cc: camerond@parliament.uk; miltona@parliament.uk
Subject: FW: University of Surrey

It would appear that the Tories are very quick to act when their image is at stake over storms in teacups (Boris being sent to Liverpool*, Patrick Mercer**), but while it’s a local issue silently affecting someone’s well-being, you simply aren’t bothered.

——————-

From: Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: 09 May 2007 14:01
To: JOHNSON, Boris
Cc: CAMERON, David; MILTON, Anne
Subject: FW: University of Surrey

Right, now that the elections are over and the Tories did oh-so-well, don’t you think that it’s time that this odious member of your party was finally brought into line? Especially since the twisted little blog no longer serves any electoral purpose that the Tory party member in question could exploit (he lost, his opponent that he was trying to discredit won, everyone is over-the-moon).

Appealing to your opportunistic sides, do you not think that a party that is preparing itself for government (and God help us all if this sorry episode represents your moral standards) should put such shocking demonstrations of your ‘nasty’ side behind you? God forbid if you should ever get into government and the press take notice of this.

Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxxx

——————-

From: HILL, Simon [HILLSA@parliament.uk]
Sent: Thu 5/10/2007 6:19 PM
To: Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: CAMERON, David; JOHNSON, Boris
Subject: RE: University of Surrey

Dear Xx Xxxxxxxxxxxx,

Thank you for your email to Boris Johnson, copied to Rt Hon David Cameron MP and Anne Milton MP. I suggest that you contact the chairman of Guildford Conservative Association, Jonathan Lord, in writing as he is the individual responsible for the conduct of Guildford Conservative Association members. Mr Lord’s contact details are as follows:

Jonathan Lord
Chairman, Guildford Conservative Association
Unit 17a, Loseley Park
Guildford
Surrey
GU3 1HS

Yours sincerely,

Simon Hill

Simon Hill
Office of Anne Milton
Member of Parliament for Guildford and
Shadow Minister for Gambling, Licensing and Tourism
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA
Tel: +44 (0)20 7219 0017
Fax: +44 (0)20 7219 5239
E-mail: hillsa@parliament.uk

——————-

(* Boris was sent to Liverpool in 2004 to apologise for his remarks about that city.)

(** Patrick Mercer was sacked from the Tory frontbench in 2007 after his remarks about race and the army.)

You can read where the correspondence went from this point in yesterday’s post. The short version is that Jonathan Lord (and his fellow Tories) did not dare address the issue during the relevant election, and tried to brush it under the carpet after that same election. I was subsequently smeared as a stalker (and, later, a paedophile) by supporters of Milton and that smear/harassment campaign continues to this day.

Even if Boris Johnson plays the classic card of implying/claiming that his staff did not pass these messages on (in spite of their use of the phrase “Boris Johnson notes your comments” and my knowledge that emails to the relevant Parliamentary address went to Johnson’s email Inbox while being copied to his staff) the fact of the matter is the correspondence ended with the matter being referred to Jonathan Lord, and Jonathan Lord took no discernable action so, while Boris Johnson may be able to reveal/prove that he did indeed raise the issue with Anne Milton or even David Cameron in some way, like Anne Milton and David Cameron, Boris Johnson is now in a position where he must at least acknowledge regret that no action was taken after the matter was referred to Jonathan Lord… especially now that audio has been published by me where Jonathan Lord confesses that made his decision to take no action (and keep the relevant activists on as candidates!!) for entirely political reasons.

So, let’s hear from Boris Johnson on this. He was made aware of a smear campaign where an innocent man was smeared as a paedophile and this man’s name, photo and whereabouts were published alongside the allegation.

Boris is an educated, media-savvy individual; he knows what the intent of such a measure is, and what the potential consequences are. He also knows that he can get away with being a bit of a buffoon and rascal at times, but showing a complete lack of care and integrity is another matter entirely.

Did he take any action? If so, what action did he take?

Did he take NO action? If so, there are many people who will regret giving him the benefit of the doubt over the Darius Guppy incident (for example).

Oh, and let’s not forget the glorious Third Way favoured by so many Tories:

Will Boris pretend that none of this has happened? If so, you can look forward to me being a wild-card campaigner in the London mayoral race, not least because his saying nothing is a strong indicator that found out about this and DID nothing, and during an election campaign is the perfect time to press the point.

(Psst! Over to you, Boris. Time to let one of your most loyal supporters on the left know if you’re a bit of a doofus or a total bastard.)








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Jonathan Lord failed to act on more than one complaint

Previously (for those who came in late):
Jonathan Lord (MP for Woking): Smears
Jonathan Lord turned a blind eye

The following is some correspondence shared with me by someone who was a student at the University of Surrey in 2006/2007 when some local Tories who ran for council started smearing an opponent as a paedophile.

I have removed their name, mainly because of the likelihood of still-active Tory smear merchants having a go at this person. Any edits are a direct result of this measure, and clearly marked.

I have no doubt Simon Hill, Anne Milton and Jonathan Lord will know who this person is, but I doubt any of them will be so stupid as to ‘out’ them or leak their name, as this would take them well beyond the point of mere complicity, and rob them of their remaining shreds of deniability.

Do note the following:

1. This portion of the correspondence begins with Simon Hill from Anne Milton’s office, clearly referring the matter to Jonathan Lord (who was then Chairman of the Guildford Conservative Association)… and yet Anne Milton still refuses to comment on the matter now she cannot deny knowing that Jonathan Lord failed to act (and why).

2. This correspondence also shows Milton keeping a safe distance between herself and this scandal, despite the correspondent specifically requesting that she take an interest and (at least) refer the matter to Lord personally. If this ever happened, there is no known record of it.

3. I suspect that by this stage Simon Hill had been briefed by Jonathan Lord about demands for written correspondence. I further suspect this was an initial stalling* tactic, designed to keep the matter at bay just long enough for the relevant election to run its course, but Lord persisted with the tactic long after the election, and continued to make nonsensical demands for “evidence in writing”.

(*It put me right off because of the reported behaviour of local Tories; i.e. turning up unannounced on people’s doorsteps to ‘discuss’ letters of complaint to the local paper. I don’t think I was alone in my concerns, especially after what the Tory activists Mike Chambers and Dennis Paul published/broadcast, including personal phone numbers of targets.)

4. There is some further email correspondence that preceded these exchanges with Simon Hill and Jonathan Lord. I plan to publish it tomorrow; it reveals the name of another senior Tory who was made aware of this scandal and its implications, but did nothing.

5. None of the local Conservatives acknowledged this person’s complaint until 5 days after the relevant election (this section of correspondence begins with Simon Hill “finally” replying on May 10, 2007, when the council elections took place on May 3, 2007). This is entirely in keeping with Jonathan Lord’s ‘off the record’ confession that he did not act more stringently/appropriately at the time because he was concerned about the potential impact on the election campaign he was directing at the time. Only a fool would think Simon HIll and Anne Milton responded to these emails without prior discussion with Jonathan Lord, but every scrap of supporting evidence is welcome.

6. Jonathan Lord seems to imply in his emails that the person complaining about the conduct of his activists is using a false identity, which would be a bit rich considering what he must have known his activists were up to by this stage… but perhaps he is merely making the classic mistake of judging others by his own standards.

————-
From: HILL, Simon
Sent: Thu 5/10/2007 6:19 PM
To: Xxxxxxx XXXXXXXX
Cc: XXXXXXX Xxxxx, XXXXXXX Xxxx
Subject: RE: University of Surrey

Dear Xx Xxxxxxxxx,

Thank you for your email to Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxxx, copied to Rt Hon David Cameron MP and Anne Milton MP. I suggest that you contact the chairman of Guildford Conservative Association, Jonathan Lord, in writing as he is the individual responsible for the conduct of Guildford Conservative Association members. Mr Lord’s contact details are as follows:

Jonathan Lord
Chairman, Guildford Conservative Association
Unit 17a, Loseley Park
Guildford
Surrey
GU3 1HS

Yours sincerely,

Simon Hill

Simon Hill
Office of Anne Milton
Member of Parliament for Guildford and
Shadow Minister for Gambling, Licensing and Tourism
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA
Tel: +44 (0)20 7219 0017
Fax: +44 (0)20 7219 5239
E-mail: hillsa@parliament.uk

————-

From: Xxxxxxx XXXXXXXX
Sent: 10 May 2007 19:18
To: HILL, Simon
Subject: RE: University of Surrey

Thank you for finally acknowledging my emails.

Unfortunately contacting Jonathan Lord would be a futile pursuit and one that I’m not prepared to embark upon; he’s already aware and has been for a considerable amount of time. Equally, you seem to be suggesting that the local MP has absolutely no sway over her own local party where she is the Member of Parliament. I find that hard to believe.

If Jonathan Lord is technically responsible for this member’s behaviour, how about Anne Milton shows her principled side and contacts him instead of me? I’m sure she would rightly disassociate herself from such behaviour so why not be pro-active and take responsibility herself? What’s more, the voice of an upstanding Member of Parliament from the same party will undoubtedly carry more weight with Mr Lord than that of some uppity student.

Regards,

Xxxxx Xxxxxxxx

————-

From: HILL, Simon [HILLSA@parliament.uk]
Sent: Tue 5/15/2007 2:19 PM
To: Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: University of Surrey

Dear Xx Xxxxxxxxx,

Thank you for your e-mail. I can only reiterate what I have already.

Yours sincerely,

Simon Hill

Simon Hill
Office of Anne Milton
Member of Parliament for Guildford and
Shadow Minister for Gambling, Licensing and Tourism
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA
Tel: +44 (0)20 7219 0017
Fax: +44 (0)20 7219 5239
E-mail: hillsa@parliament.uk

————-

From: Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxx
Sent: 15 May 2007 14:29
To: HILL, Simon
Subject: RE: University of Surrey

Thanks for your reply again.

If that’s the case, would you have an email address for Mr Lord? The reason is that I’m leaving Guildford soon and I’m unsure as to where I’ll be living next. I wouldn’t want to send written correspondence giving a return address that I might not be at in a week’s time.

Regards,

Xxxxx Xxxxxxxx

————-

From: HILL, Simon [HILLSA@parliament.uk]
Sent: Thu 5/17/2007 6:38 PM
To: Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: University of Surrey

Dear Xx Xxxxxxxxx,

Thank you for your e-mail. I suggest that you use the Guildford Conservatives’ e-mail address which is on their website ( info@guildfordconservatives.com) marking the e-mail for the attention of Mr Lord.

Yours sincerely,

Simon Hill

Simon Hill
Office of Anne Milton
Member of Parliament for Guildford and
Shadow Minister for Gambling, Licensing and Tourism
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA
Tel: +44 (0)20 7219 0017
Fax: +44 (0)20 7219 5239
E-mail: hillsa@parliament.uk

————-

From: Xxxxxx XXXXXXXXXX
Date: Mon, May 21, 2007 at 1:14 PM
Subject: FAO Jonathan Lord
To: info@guildfordconservatives.com

Dear Mr Lord,

Please see below an email exchange that I have had with some Conservative MPs over a relatively extended period. You should read from the bottom upwards.

Regards,

Xxxxx Xxxxxxxx

————-

[NOTE – ‘from the bottom upwards.’ refers to all correspondence above this email; I have rearranged these emails so they are in sequential order]

————-

On 5/24/07, Guildford CA wrote:

Dear Xx Xxxxxxxxx,

Thank you for your email and email thread.

I had some (amicable) dealings with the Chairman of the local Liberal Democrats during the course of the election campaign. An inappropriate link was brought to my attention which was then removed from the blog section of a candidate’s personal website.

If you have allegations to make against any member of this Association, I would ask you to put them in writing (with all supporting evidence) and send them to the following address:

Jonathan Lord
Chairman, Guildford Conservative Association
Unit 17a, Loseley Park
Guildford
Surrey
GU3 1HS

Thank you again for your email.

Yours sincerely,

Jonathan Lord
Chairman, GCA

————-

On 5/24/07, Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxx wrote:

Mr Lord,

As far as I can tell the evidence is included in my first email; it’s quite clear.

Finally, as I mentioned in my email to Simon Hill which you can see below, I don’t want to send written correspondence because I’m moving out of Guildford soon and I don’t know where I’m going to be living. I therefore can’t indicate a return address and so prefer to communicate via email.

Regards,

Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxx

————-

From: Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxx
To: Guildford CA
Sent: Saturday, June 09, 2007 5:03 PM
Subject: Re: FAO Jonathan Lord

Mr Lord,

Do you have any further information with regards to our recent correspondence?

Regards,

Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxxx

————-

From: Guildford CA
Date: Thu, Jun 14, 2007 at 1:29 PM
Subject: Re: FAO Jonathan Lord
To: Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxx

Dear Xx Xxxxxxxxx,

I have double-checked your first email.

You call Anne Milton MP “profoundly dishonest”, and you refer us to a blog that is antagonistic to Anne Milton MP and Guildford Conservatives.

If you have a complaint that you wish to be taken seriously then I require it in writing, and with any supporting evidence in writing. I therefore refer you to my previous email.

I am sure that there is a return address (of your parents, of a friend, of your place of study or your workplace) to which any reply of our Association could be directed.

Our email correspondence on this matter is now at an end.

Thank you.

Yours sincerely,

Jonathan Lord
Chairman, G.C.A.

————-

That “first email” will be published tomorrow. The blog he refers to is mine; Jonathan Lord implies that issues of partisanship cause him to distrust the evidence presented by me (and others). He has also repeatedly pretended that he was never seen any of the relevant evidence, and he does so again to a considerable degree here.

The evidence in question was live on websites other than mine, and far more convincing in its live state than any written version might be.

Further, in this exchange, Jonathan Lord also gives what I suspect is at least a one-sided take on his correspondence with local Lib Dems (looking into it, folks) in which he reveals he was fully aware of a key point of evidence; one of his activists clearly published an “inappropriate link” on a political blog published in his own name.

It is clear from my discussion with Mr Lord that this is a reference to a link published on Dennis Paul’s weblog, and he would only have known it was inappropriate if he had followed the hyperlink.

By this stage, the site this “inappropriate link” led to had not only maintained the accusation of paedophilia for almost a year, it also featured a photo of the target and details of where they might be found, and had also published a personal phone number as part of its ‘investigation’.

The discovery that Dennis Paul had knowingly linked to a site of this nature should have led to the immediate termination of his candidacy and his expulsion from the Conservatives. It didn’t.

The removal of this link should not have been the end of the matter, but rather the beginning of a full investigation into his conduct and that of fellow Tory candidate Mike Chambers. It wasn’t.

Jonathan Lord turned a blind eye to the matter, before and after the relevant election, for entirely selfish/political reasons.

Tomorrow, I plan to name and shame another senior Tory (other than David Cameron) who was made fully aware of this dangerous smear campaign and yet took no discernable action.

(In fact, they later had the audacity to describe the dispute that arose from it as a “personal disagreement”.)








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Anne Milton cried ‘stalker’ and later denied it: here’s the evidence

Recently, some Tories have been producing doctored evidence to support an ongoing smear campaign against me while others have been demanding I produce evidence to support my contention that there is an ongoing smear campaign against me involving some Tories.

Putting the asburdity of this situation aside for moment, there’s a lot of evidence involving many people in a long and complicated saga, so I asked the latter Tory what* they wanted me to prove. The nearest I could get to a straight answer was an objection to this letter to Steve Hilton. No specific point was raised; they chose instead to challenge the whole letter.

This same person claims to be a member of a government communications team, and this claim seem plausible. What doesn’t seem plausible is that they would refuse to report it to their superiors because they haven’t seen enough evidence to date to warrant this effort.

I aim to make this point today by reiterating a key claim from that letter to Steve Hilton and presenting the relevant supporting evidence:

Anne Milton recently denied saying anything that may have even given people the impression that I had harassed or stalked her in any way, but I can prove this to be a lie. – (source)

This is from an email exchange with James Clayton from Anne Milton’s office from January 2010. Previous to this, I had made it clear to Milton that the specific accusation that I had stalked her had been published alongside my home address:

“Anne asked me to let you know that she doesn’t have a ‘stance’ on you. She also said she isn’t responsible for things other people say about you.” – James Clayton, Office of Anne Milton MP

I took this to mean that Anne Milton does not regard herself to have been stalked in any way, and has not said or done anything that she would regard to be a reason for anyone come to that conclusion and/or make that accusation on her behalf, and the wider correspondence supports that this was indeed her contention at the time.

However, I can prove that Anne Milton did make this specific accusation herself and she is responsible for some things other people say about me when they go on to repeat an accusation like this… like Sandra Howard did on the Conservatives’ own website in 2005:

“In Guildford our candidate, Anne Milton and Michael stand on the flower market steps and tell the large gathered crowd they are ready to shoulder it. Michael wants to better people’s lives and he knows how to do it. The jeers of a few vocal protesters are drowned by the cheering. It’s a rousing reception. One deeply unpleasant man near me, called Anne a “Dipstick”; she says he’s been stalking her on his website as well. .” – Sandra Howard (source)

Note the ‘as well’, which implies that my presence at the event amounts to stalking. I was there at a public event to photograph people who were there to have their photograph taken. According to the logic of the people who did not want me to reveal what a charade their campaign was, this was an arrestable offence.

In fact, some Tories claim that police subsequently took an interest:

“He has harangued the MP for Croydon**, Anne Milton, to the point where she had to involve the police.” – Nadine Dorries (source)

But this claim by Dorries is a lie if not a gross distortion; the police got involved when they looked into the conduct of Milton’s activists (latest/background). At no stage was my conduct under question… unless you count the anonymous comments consistently traced back to Mike Chambers and/or Dennis Paul that later started appearing on Iain Dale’s website (shortly before he started repeating the accusation of stalking as if it were fact).

Dorries also claimed the following:

“I have had to report him to The Met police on two occassions… You can speak to a number of MPs including Anne Milton, including Patrick Mercer, and others MPs who have the same issues with him… all of (these) other MPs have also reported him to police.” – Nadine Dorries (source)

Did Anne Milton report me to police as Nadine Dorries claims? The accusation is being made in her name and Dorries is using her as a named source to back up her accusations… do I really need evidence that Milton made this specific allegation herself if I’m to expect her to take an interest?

I would argue not, but I’ve produced that evidence anyway; Anne Milton herself is the earliest known source of any claim that I stalked that woman and, through Sandra Howard***, her claim was subsequently broadcast on the Conservatives.com website

Anne Milton needs to either (a) deny making the allegation, (b) support the allegation with evidence, or (c) withdraw the allegation and take immediate steps to address the smear campaign she has (perhaps unwittingly) involved herself in.

Until then, her silence is evidence of her complicity.

Actually, make that ‘further evidence’ of her complicity.

Anne Milton has known about all of this for months now and yet has repeatedly engaged herself in the deceit that it is none of her concern… even after she has been informed of Sandra Howard’s testimony.

The following is a series of questions that Anne Milton has so far only sought to address by (finally) making good on my DPA request to her office:

from: Tim Ireland
to: Anne Milton
date: Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 10:12 AM
subject: ‘Stalking’

Anne,

1. Your recent denials about accusing me of stalking are contradicted by the published testimony of Sandra Howard who said in 2005 of my attendance at a public event in the local High St; “(Anne Milton) says he’s been stalking her on his website as well”. Who else did you share this quite specific and wholly unjustified accusation with? Do you deny sharing it with Iain Dale, for example?

2. I talked to your son on the day of that same public event. He approached me and accused me of using ringers in reviews of my books on Amazon (ie as a counter-accusation to your use of ringers in your campaign literature). His conclusions were all wrong, but he could not have arrived at them without subjecting me to the same level of scrutiny that you described as ‘stalking’ when it was aimed at you. Do you think your son stalked me? Do you think it would be fair if I described this as your son stalking me?

3. Did you ever file a police report complaining about my stalking you? If not, on what basis do you justify your use of the word ‘stalking’ (or do you regret your use of what amounts to extraordinary hyperbole)? If the latter is the case, given you are wholly aware of the conduct of Wightman and others, do you think it’s appropriate for a cabinet minister to tolerate if not rely on vigilante action by party/campaign supporters (if not donors), including the dissemination and publication of my home address alongside the accusation that I stalked you specifically?

4. Do you recognise the role played by Dennis Paul and/or Mike Chambers in the publication of intimate details and false claims about my work and family life? If so, why didn’t you describe/condemn this as ‘stalking’? If you do not recognise the role they played in the publication/promotion of the relevant site, why not?

5. What explanation can you give for not complying with my DPA request for over 150 days, and what reason can you give for not complying with the aspects of my FOI request that do not involve constituents beyond myself and my immediate family? (I assume you will not be complying with the FOI request. If you’d care to comply as a sign of good faith, I’d be delighted to be proved wrong.)

6. What explanation can you give for my DPA/FOI request being viewed by someone in the office of the Guildford Conservative Association? What business is it of theirs?

7. Mike Chambers claims than an internal investigation took place into the anonymous sites smearing myself and [named snipped]. Is what Chamber claims true? Was an internal investigation conducted?

8. If it is true, who conducted the investigation and why do you think the current Chairman (Andrew Colborne-Baber) might be having difficulty locating the relevant paperwork?

9. If an internal investigation took place, why was I not advised of its outcome?

10. Do you have any comment on the police being under the false impression at the time that a key witness in this matter, [name snipped], did not exist?

11. Do you have any comment on the claim by Mike Chambers that, following accusations by Dennis Paul, you and Jonathon Lord believed me to be a computer criminal (ie what he described as a ‘hacker’, and creator/propagator of computer viruses)? If true, what evidence were you basing this on, and how did this influence your thinking at the time?

12. Finally, do you have any comment on the practice of representatives making unannounced visits to the homes of people who wrote letters to the Surrey Ad that were critical of you and your 2005 campaign and included details of their address?

Tim Ireland

You may note that some of the later questions have also been answered in part by Jonathan Lord’s ‘off the record’ response to similar questions; there wasn’t anything approaching the kind of investigation that Mike Chambers described when speaking in his defence… which is something else that Anne Milton and David Cameron need to address. Both of them referred the matter of anonymous smear sites to Jonathan Lord for action… and he took none.

The next round of evidence will deal (again) with this point and reveal the name of another senior Tory who turned a blind eye to the antics of Milton’s supporters/activists.

Then perhaps we can turn to the subject of how correspondence between those supporters/activists and Sue Doughty wound up in the possession of Dominic Wightman (see: doctored evidence) and what further statement Anne Milton might wish to make about her relationship with this man.

(Anne Milton’s staff requested 24 hours to respond to the first draft of this article. 24 hours passed, and no response came. )

[*Psst! At one stage this anonymous Tory chap portrayed my accusation(s) as the allegation of a government conspiracy against me (i.e. as if they challenged me to prove that), but the way I see it (and will have repeatedly tried to put it) it goes as high as some people IN government, but this is far more likely to be an broadly connected series of selfish bastards looking out for their own interests, and basically behaving according to type. I have not alleged or implied – as Iain Dale has, for example – that there is a Downing Street authored document detailing a plan to ‘get’ me. It’s a straw man.]

[**Anne Milton is the MP for Guildford, not Croydon.]

[*** Rachel Whetstone (see: the letter to her husband, Steve Hilton) was the former chief of staff for Michael Howard at the time. She would’ve cleared this text for publication if she were doing her job properly.]








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