I have no sympathy for Tory Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell in the ongoing “Plebs” row. I still think he should go but , when I read The Sun’s report quoting the official police log why did it immediately conjure up images in my mind of shady deals in pubs between hacks and coppers as a result of notes written up after conversations in the police canteen?

Of course such images only stem from memories of the “bad old days” and do not accurately reflect the relationship between police and press in the 21st century.

Not at all….

Tim Montgomerie, from ConservativeHome, his magisterial perch at the summit of Mount Olympus, has pronounced his verdict on the Andrew Mitchell “swearing at a police officer” fandango – and it appears that it’s all part of dastardly plod plot to kneecap the Cameron regime.

His focus is on the Police Federation and the Bob Crow PF spokespersons who come onto our screens and mouth toneless drivel in the same manner they might recite “evidence” in court in order to fit up some lowlife loser for an extra 156 burglaries he didn’t really do.

He implies that the PF has an agenda and are milking the Mitchell incident for all they are worth so we should accept his apology and move on because maybe Mitchell is a “bruiser” but he is a diamond geezer who is only fiery because he is passionate about his brief.

Yeah – pull the other one

If, as he left Downing Street with his bike it had suddenly dawned on him that he had behaved stupidly and gone back immediately and apologised with good grace then that might have been sufficient. But his apology only came when the situation went pear shaped and, most likely, he received a sharp phone call from Number Ten – it was therefore that classic of modern politics the gritted teeth apology mouthed unwillingly as a red hot poker hovers menacingly close to the derriere.

Of course the PF is milking it – but that doesn’t excuse Mitchell’s conduct. As one commentator said

What one member of a party said when he had a bad day couldn’t really concern me less these outbursts happen people get stressed and a dam breaks. I am glad he has apologised that is the right response and had it been in a less public instance i imagine that would be the end of it. However even he must be aware that his actions have reflected very badly with the general public and are now doing harm to both the party and its message, he shouldn’t have to be pushed out he should realise he needs to go. The fact he hasn’t and has chosen to place his self intrest above the good of the whole reflects worse on him in my book than the initial fiasco.

It also reveals the lack of sensitivity in Cameron’s political antennae. He should have immediately recognised the political/social ramifications of this incident and acted quite brutally. It would have squashed the “toff” narrative dead in the water and shown the key quality of ruthlessness that leaders must display at odd moments to instil a little fear into the lower ranks.

Not good enough, I’m afraid, Mr Montgomerie. Mitchell should disappear – and fast.

Quentin Letts at the Daily Mail has obviously been asked to take London Mayor Boris Johnson down a peg or two in the light of the Olympic/Paralympic Borisfest.

Quentin has decided, therefore, to suggest that Boris is OK for a little light relief but would be no good in those situations where tough choices have to be made or brows need to be furrowed. So, in his piece on Cameron’s speech to the House on the findings of the Hillsborough Report he finished off with a dig at Boris.

Some people are currently bigging up the Mayor’s prospects. They should get real. This overdue, moving speech was one that Boris Johnson could never have given.

Mr Letts also reminded us that Boris needed to apologise as well

He once insulted Liverpool and his name was mentioned a couple of times towards the end of yesterday’s session. Should he once more apologise to Liverpool?

Actually he apologised at the time and he did so again today. But that is not the point. There is obviously a measure of irritation around Cameron’s circle about the mayor’s popularity and Quentin has probably been persuaded to spread a little poison.

Did the crowd’s reaction to Boris at the final parade of the Olympians annoy the Cameron cabal? Of course it did. But what always sticks in the throat of the Cameroons is something much more hurtful to the soul……Boris has gone before the electorate of London twice over the last five years and each time has won a mandate to govern. Cameron failed to do that in 2010 and as a result is stuck in a coalition with Clegg and Cable…

Oh dear, Dave – that must hurt….time for someone to ring Quentin again…

A lazy and childish piece of work Erika. This sort of intellectually vacuous fluff might be commendable in a high school magazine but not in anything that wants to be taken seriously

Wow – you certainly wouldn’t call that a demonstration of nuance..

It’s a comment on a post at Hot Air by Erika Johnsen in which she uses a poll of Europeans published in the UK Guardian to show that many of them don’t think much of GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney (an opinion which, I believe, was until comparatively recently also shared by a great many US conservatives) She uses the results to show how Europeans are decadent and lily livered compared to Americans in general and Mitt Romney in particular.

What with their many debt crises and severe unemployment levels, coupled with their socialism and their general political foppishness — which is all just working out so well for them — the absence of the European layman’s endorsement is kind of a dagger to my heart. I think I may have to rethink my vote now. …Not. You’ll forgive me, Europe, if I prefer to work for an America that is a strong, robust, take-no-prisoners powerhouse of moral and economic righteousness, rather than just another impotent, piddling player on the international stage. Sorry I’m not sorry.

That’s fine, Erika – tell that to the Germans with their massive private sector, lower unemployment and export led prosperity…and not a Chinese loan in sight..

Foppishness – I bet that would go down well with those British soldiers with their tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, helping you with your “war on terror” and their comrades who are still getting killed or maimed fighting alongside your troops.

It’s a shoddy piece of hackery, designed to gain applause from the Neanderthal wing of the lumpenproletariat – and if you read the bulk of the comments she certainly scores a hit with the zombies. But “journalism” it certainly isn’t.

It appears that Erika “The Gem” Johnsen has taken over Allahpundit’s old role of dumping on those pesky foreigners. The trouble is that although Allah’s knowledge of culture and politics outside the USA was shallow and stereotyped he did write with fluidity and wit. Miss Johnsen lacks his saving grace. She has tried to create a kind of perky pseudo Palin schtick, striving to sell herself as a sassy tough as nails chick as at ease working out at the gym as she is downing beers with the guys at the bar.

Epic fail – Her style is contrived and her humour is leaden.

Fact is she was almost certainly hired by the powers that be at Hot Air to pimp Mitt Romney as a ballsbreaking conservative iron man who is so tea party he doesn’t even have to acknowledge the tea party. Romneycare? Forget it – I am sure Erika would say that was some other guy called Romney. Indeed it wouldn’t surprise me if she produced a rail and claimed that it was actually split by Mitt in his early days of rural poverty working with Abe Lincoln….

Amusing really, if it wasn’t so sad for, until a few months ago , you would hardly find anything in the Hot Air posts or comments that was favourable to Romney. Now it has become the digital arm of the Romney campaign – which explains Erika Johnsen…

Come back, Tina Korbe – all is forgiven…….

The Aurora shootings and the aftermath have been media headline fillers here in the UK for several days. Our hacks and pundits love this sort of story because it allows them to pontificate on Americans and guns and how any wingnut is able to stroll into a hardware store and kit himself out with enough firepower to recreate the Battle of the Somme if he is so minded.

This then leads in to the issue of gun control and how sensible folk like President Obama and his liberal/left cohorts in politics and media would just love to wean their fellow Americans off their guns and become an unarmed community like Britain….well not exactly unarmed because criminals are quite heavily armed but hey, they just shoot each other, don’t they?

But wait a minute…..” any wingnut”….hold on that…our media prefers the shooters to be white and middle class and slightly creepy because central casting has lots of guys to fit that role.

Of course if you are Brian Ross of NBC white also equals Tea Party. If you’re Joe Scarborough of MSNBC white = autistic loner. the sort of people who never go to Tina Brown’s parties or read the New Yorker or ski at Aspen.

What the Americans need, according to our media pundits, is much stricter laws on gun ownership and gun carrying – except, as Prof William Jacobson points out there are more people shot by guns in Chicago in one month than were shot in that Aurora cinema…..

…and Chicago has some of the strictest gun control laws in the whole of the USA

But of course you will never learn much about the bloody gun culture in “gunfree” Chicago because there are very few spotty white middle class nerds poncing about the South and West sides of the city. This is black on black crime and usually drugs related so not only does it have little news value but merely mentioning those facts would be declared a racist hate crime – and that would never so….

…..and, eeeeermmm, practically the whole Obama machine hails from Chicago…

BTW…if you want to keep yourself informed about the matters that are concerning American conservatives don’t use UK blogs like Conservative HomeUSA or the Spectator Coffee House – they’ll just retread stuff from NYT and WaPo. Go to Prof Jacobson’s blog at Legal Insurrection – it’s Tea Party friendly , easy to follow and 100% suspicious of the great and the good …..

It’s handbags at dawn as Peter Oborne gives Tim Montgomerie and his Ashcroft funded Conservativehome website a bitchslap in the dark alleyway behind DT HQ. Ashcroft is using Montgomerie as a sock puppet to shift Cameron & Co to the right, wails a distraught Oborne and it’s not fair because Peter wants David all to himself.

Others can dissect the root causes of this catfight better than myself but there are some observations that need to be made –the most obvious being that it’s a bit rich Oborne screeching about Ashcroft using his wealth to bankroll a media outlet in order to channel his own views. After all, he himself is obviously trousering a few sovs from the reclusive Barclay brothers who not only own the DT but also fiercely resist all attempts at invading their privacy. They say they run a hands off operation but articles about Sark politics and sycophantic features about Catholicism tend to open that claim to question.

Then this complaint about hectoring Cameron from the DT seems rather strange when one recalls the vicious guerrilla warfare waged by the paper against John Major in the 90s on behalf of….(don’t laugh)…Michael Portillo…”man of destiny” etc…

Oborne, of course, assumes, like most pundits, that we ordinary folk are incapable of drawing up our own opinions and need guidance from the pundit priesthood to make the right decisions. Hence we Tories supposedly pore over the Telegraph or Conservativehome to find out what we should be thinking today, rather like earnest Bolsheviks leafing through Pravda in the 1930s.

Cobblers

Many Tory voters don’t even read the DT – and probably a large number of those who do would not bother with Oborne. Even fewer visit ConHome (and when you read some of the comments there they seem to be mostly wearing tinfoil hats)

Peter and Tim are obviously big in the Westminster village – and that is their limit. Both of them shrink down to size when on TV…..Montgomerie is like a fairly unsuccessful insurance salesman and Oborne brilliantly fills the role of the pompous, opinionated Latin teacher at some third rate prep school.

Give me Nigel Farage or Dan Hannan any day…

And as for one person being able to influence conservatives with a tweet or a few words on Facebook there is only one person in the western world who can do that – Sarah Palin in the USA. Both Oborne and Montgomerie would view her with disdain. But then they need to ask themselves why her words have so much power.

Maybe it has to do with honesty and fearlessness – and not giving a tinker’s cuss what anyone else thinks…

Lord Leveson, the big legal cheese heading up the Inquiry into media behaviour and, it appears everything else in infinity and beyond, had his bewigged fronds bruised by the audacity of a member of a government duly elected by a majority of British voters who said

the Leveson Inquiry had created a ‘chilling atmosphere’ towards freedom of expression and any attempt to tighten regulation of newspapers could result in ‘a cure worse than the original disease’.

It is alleged that the noble lord was deeply aggrieved by such abusive language and perhaps he almost considered referring the matter to his unelected mates at the European Court of Human Rights. But, instead, he took the UK Establishment route. The unelected judge complained to an unelected civil servant, no less a figure than Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary and Britain’s pen pusher supreme.

Memos obviously went back and forth. Quiet words were probably whispered into certain ears. Attempts to unruffle feathers were made. No doubt the golden mantra of avoiding a “fuss” could be heard in the corridors of power. So when Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Education, the minister who had so rattled the Levesonian cage, was summoned to give evidence to the Inquiry himself it was expected that, still smarting from rapped knuckles, he would, like Henry II in 1174, crawl on his knees in penance across the room, clothed in sackcloth and covered with ashes.

Instead the noble judge was shocked to find Mr. Gove not only defiant but openly aggressive in his attitude towards the Inquiry in general and His Levesonianship in particular.

Mr. Gove, the Education Secretary, gave an impassioned defence of the right to offend people as he gave evidence to the hearing on media ethics. Mr. Gove clashed with the judge several times, as he warned against knee-jerk decisions to put new restrictions on newspapers and broadcasters. “The cry, ‘Something must be done’ often leads to people doing something which isn’t always wise,”

Moreover he actually had the nerve to rebuke His Legal Lordship

The judge said he was concerned that the Education Secretary was prepared to put up with “unacceptable, albeit not necessarily criminal” behaviour from journalists because of the right to freedom of speech.
Mr. Gove said some cases of press misbehaviour were “deplorable” but argued that these could be punished under existing laws, such as defamation. “Freedom of speech doesn’t mean anything unless some people are going to be offended some of the time,” the minister said. Defending the “rough-edged” trade of journalism, the minister said it “twas ever thus” that reporters are unpopular. “Politicians and journalists have always tended to be held in relatively low regard,” he said

Politicians and journalists have always tended to be held in relatively low regard
He might easily have added lawyers and judges…….

Mick Hume at Spiked sums up this farce in his usual straight from the hip style

We are faced with an almost medieval spectacle of a judge and his top lawyer acting as priestly men of wisdom, apparently drawing their authority from some higher power, to interrogate and pass judgement on elected politicians and other public figures from the mortal world. That might have seemed strange and worrying enough. Stranger and more worrying still, however, is that so many rational and liberal-minded figures have chosen not merely to kowtow to the unreasonable power of the inquisition, but to cheer on the inquisitors

Cameron’s attempt to hit this hacking affair into the long grass by setting up the Inquiry has been a signal failure. Instead of allowing the courts to decide if actual laws had been broken by examining evidence he merely provided an additional trough into which well heeled lawyers and celebrity weasels can plunge their snouts.

Full marks. then, to Mr Gove for pricking the Levesonian balloon. However, even more satisfying, it seems clear that the general public have already filed this as a circus of relevance only to the Westminster village. With the Eurozone imploding and the UK economy at ground zero the noble lord and his underlings are prancing around the sawdust to a rapidly dwindling audience.

A sob story about long term unemployed jobseekers offered work experience placements as Diamond Jubilee stewards being badly treated was too good to miss for the media elite of the left. Frustrated by the widespread support for the Queen exhibited by millions of ordinary people and uncomfortable with the sight of so many union flags being waved the Guardian and BBC jumped with glee into the issue using anonymous sources to buttress accusations of “slave labour”

Unsurprisingly it was also picked up in the USA by the left wing agitprop website Gawker.

Rather than do some real journalism to find out if other stewards embedded in the scheme shared a similar negative experience the Guardian hacks looked around to see if there was any dim witted pompous windbag who could be wound up and propelled into the media spotlight to give the story political legs.

They needed a pea brained dim-witted has been who would be obtuse enough to pontificate loudly and aggressively without bothering to do any homework

Enter John Prescott

They then needed a highly paid and extremely wealthy member of the soft left media elite to highlight the wages of the people who ran the Jubilee Stewards project and to then try to sandbag one of them on BBC Newsnight.

Enter Kirsty Wark

The trouble with anonymous sources, however, is that it is always difficult to validate the truth of their statements by referencing their backgrounds and checking their claims under hostile cross examination so when several fellow stewards went public with their experiences while offering up their names the BBC/Guardianistas should have been delighted.

Unfortunately these people said their experience had been positive and questioned the accuracy of the Prescott/Wark line.

Isn’t it annoying how facts can so often spoil a good left wing fantasy…

Quote of the week from “Autoamerican” spotted here…

This is hysterical. The mainstream media boasts teams of Harvard graduates, gleaming, high-rise headquarters in our largest cities, far-flung foreign bureaus streaming information 24/7, and universal coverage via newspaper circulation, channel space and satellite relay. Yet Sarah Palin, sitting in her living room in the middle of the Alaskan tundra – probably with Trig seated on her lap – continues to control America’s political narrative.

The US media is beginning, reluctantly, to acknowledge that fact – but dare they ever ask the key question which is WHY?

“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

The dog that did nothing in the night?

Why, it’s the US media, of course which doesn’t seem too keen to unravel the mystery behind what appears to be an attempt to discourage conservative bloggers from reporting facts that are already a matter of public record

Read this and then ask yourself why, at present, there is virtually nothing about it on American TV screens and in the pages of those Pulitzer prize winning investigative “journalists” from New York and Washington…or their branch office in London, the BBC.

Surely it cannot be because of certain influences?

However now a trio of ornery conservative saddle tramps like Dan Riehl, Instapundit and Legal Insurrection with many others have gone into the darkened woodshed at night with their torches what rough beast will be revealed slouching in the corner?

BTW, if you think it couldn’t happen here just remember this and this…