A belated and timely reassessment of John Major’s premiership from Peter Oborne at the Daily Telegraph.

His administration has enjoyed a terrible reputation and remains associated with sleaze, incompetence, drift and weakness. But as time has passed this verdict has started to look unfair. History may yet be much kinder to John Major than many would have thought.

Yet a closer look at the facts (those oh so inconvenient nuggets of truth that undermine the seductive charm of wishful thinking) Major’s government had a good record of solid achievement in Northern Ireland, public service reform, education and pensions. The benefits of the Maastricht monetary union opt out, though widely derided at the time by the great and the good from the left have kept us out of the current Euro quicksand. Above all, after the (admittedly self inflicted) trauma of Black Wednesday in 1992, within five years the economy had been turned around.

By 1997 employment was rising, growth stable, and the deficit was well under control, meaning that Gordon Brown as chancellor inherited the most benign economic scenario for any British government of the last century. The situation was so fundamentally strong that it took three successive Labour administrations to wreck it.

But at the time, as Oborne guiltily admits, he and his fellow journalists waged an unrelenting campaign of contemptuous denigration against Major.

Yet during the later stages of his premiership, Major was treated with almost universal, vicious derision. Calumny after calumny was heaped upon him, and though this campaign of laceration was led in Parliament by Blair’s brilliant New Labour opposition, the newspapers were all too happy to join in.

His humble origins were viciously mocked. His ordinary, untheatrical bank manager demeanour was constantly compared unfavourably with the flashy showmanship of Tony Blair’s car salesman – and the charge was orchestrated, not so much from the natural enemies of the right at the BBC and Guardian but from that so called bastion of conservatism at the Daily Telegraph. Day in, day out vicious barbs were penned by the likes of Simon Heffer and Boris Johnson (yes, that Boris) deliberately aimed at undermining Major and preparing the way for their chosen messiah….Michael Portillo….

Don’t laugh – the saviour of the Tories was going to be a shallow, etch-a-sketch glamour boy, a trimmer who played to whichever gallery was making the most noise. Somehow (only the gods know why) the Telegraph fell madly in love with Portillo and so successfully tarnished Major’s reputation that in 1997 Labour swept back to power with a massive majority of parliamentary seats. Hundreds of Tories failed to win their constituencies – including (to the laughter of the gods) Portillo, the Telegraph’s “man of destiny”

By the way, this month, twenty years ago, saw the last Tory victory in a General Election. Against the prophesies of the pundits and the prognostications of the pollsters John Major was returned to Downing Street.

Right up to the BBC exit polls, it was assumed that Neil Kinnock’s Labour would win. But John Major, always underestimated by a sneering metropolitan media class, triumphed against the odds.
He won more votes – 14 million – than any other British prime minister has ever done. In popular terms, the margin of victory was immense. No less than 42 per cent of the voters came out for Major, 34 per cent for Kinnock. But the bias of the British electoral system hit the Conservatives hard.
Had Labour enjoyed that 8 per cent lead in the popular vote, it would have secured a parliamentary majority of more than 100. Unlucky Major ended up with a majority of just 21, which was whittled away over the coming years until his government ended in ignominy and defeat

That’s right – the disdained John Major managed to achieve something that has eluded David Cameron (AKA Michael Portillo Mk II)….a decisive Tory victory in terms of popular voter support…

…and, partially thanks to the Daily Telegraph it might possibly be the last…..

Since the secretive Barclay Brothers took over the UK Telegraph the once highly respected broadsheet has been transformed into a lifestyle paper on a par with those glossy magazines you find in front of you on a long haul flight.

All the experienced hacks were despatched into the ether because they were far too expensive and you couldn’t easily link their output to advertising fashion or furniture, food or flydrives. They were then replaced with cheap gap year students highly skilled in cutting and pasting stuff from other media outlets – in other words the Telegraph became a slightly upmarket version of the Daily Mail.

In yet another brilliant cost cutting wheeze they realised they didn’t really need specialists in reporting politics. Instead they could get one of their lifestyle drones to double up.

Enter Matthew Norman, restaurant critic, wine expert – and ace commentator on UK and US politics.

He writes a Bryony Gordon style “filler” column every Saturday (just to plug up what would be a rather white patch of paper) and this week he gives the US Republican Party some advice culled from his vast experience of eating freebie meals in expensive restaurants….go for the middle.

You see failed lawyer Matthew knows that the GOP needs to copy the Democrats and get a “centrist” candidate like Obama. Forget the wingnut Tea Party, listen to the wise men from New York and Washington and choose an MSM selected safe pair of hands who won’t rock the boat, won’t worry about the deficit and certainly won’t do anything to irritate Iran or North Korea.
Hey and forget about Sarah Palin

Obama’s one serious electoral fear is the imposition of a more dangerous candidate at an open or brokered GOP convention in August. That worry has now receded. The only Republican to show an interest in that, and then only for a tease, is the high priestess of folksy narcissism from Alaska – and even the Republican party isn’t bonkers enough to hand the keys to the asylum to Sarah Palin.

After all, of what use was she or the Tea Party in the 2010 midterms…

Besides if you want to find an expert on narcissism look no further than restaurant critic….

How do I know in my bones that the coverage of the 2012 US election will be total crapola, not just from the card carrying rainbow and unicorn lefty luvvies at the BBC but also from the “official” so called right wing media?

Like any sane, well balanced and nuanced English conservative populist I hardly ever bother to get my information about US politics from the established UK media.. BBC (MSNBC in drag), Telegraph (Country Club GOP), Mail (National Enquirer)…or the right wing blogosphere.. ConservativeHome (Douthat/Brooks/Frum), Spectator Coffee House (Frum/Brooks/Douthat)

Why should I bother with yesterday’s stale bread when I can go to Hot Air, Stacy McCain, Dan Riehl and Prof Jacobson to get the just baked bagels? Or fly around the Twitterverse with @SissyWillis, @pepper_10, @ginthegin and other wild Tea Partiers/Palinistas

It was from Hot Air & Co. that I first learned about the Tea Party as early as February 2009, long months before it appeared on UK media radar. It was also from those sites, articulating a fierce anger, not just against the Obama stimulus and healthcare plans but also against the Douthat/Brooks/Frum nexus of GOP choirmasters that I began to realise the strength of the fireball that hit Washington in the 2010 mid terms.

Until well into 2010 the UK media and blogs were following the Brooks line of working with Obama and the Democrats because they had won so overwhelmingly in 2008. Avoid outright confrontation and maybe, in 2016 or 2020 an Obama- lite GOP figure might be able to slip into the White House – the Huntsman scenario.

Palin, of course, was sniffily dismissed as an airhead. Herman Cain was blanked when he was an outsider and still is being relatively ignored even though he is currently pushing out Perry in the polls. Neither of them passed the David Brooks trouser crease test.

At almost every stage the UK media and “official” blogosphere has got it wrong about the US political scene.

Which is why I am dreading the forthcoming coverage of the 2012 primary and presidential campaign

We could really do with a UK website that totally ignores comments from NYT, WaPo and the official newsletter of the DNC, Politico, and the legions of lobbyists, consultants and seedy academics paraded by Rentaquote.

There has been progress – the relatively new Commentator isn’t interested in what David Frum opines, Spiked is wildly anarchic poking it’s rapiers from both the left and the right into the pompous and self serving political/cultural media elite and Biased BBC continues its never ending crusade against the smug, arrogant North London dinner party cartels that run the BBC. But it’s an uphill battle against a powerful network of establishment quislings who rely on the collective mental inertia of a an intellectually disenfranchised population more easily seduced by watching the degrading antics of publicity seeking clowns and charlatans and being politically masturbated by the politics of greed, envy and ignorance…..

We are beset by snakes – why isn’t there a mongoose around when you need one……

I suppose I can always dream….

Why am I creepy? I’m hardly pro Palin, if that’s your insinuation.

What sort of person would use that as a defence?

But let’s begin at the beginning.

Perusing the UK Daily Telegraph online, yesterday (I refuse to put a portion of my hard earned pension into the wallets of the Barclay brothers for the dubious pleasure of reading the latest trillings from Bryony Gordon printed on a dead tree) I came across this review of Nick Broomfield’s documentary on Governor Palin by the DT’s film critic, Tim Robey.

Now as I am on a fixed income and therefore have to count my pennies I must confess that I don’t usually read Mr Robey’s pieces because I can rarely afford the luxury of a visit to the cinema or the renting of a DVD – it would be like pressing my nose against the toyshop window lusting for the £50 robot dog with my 25p clutched in my hand. But I understand in the world of the cultural media elite he is highly regarded by the great and the good (including that arbiter of all things artistic, Guy Lodge) and, on the few occasions I have read his musings, I have no reason to dispute the contention that his place in the higher levels of London’s Culture Heap is richly deserved.

So, having a passing interest in the world of US politics, I linked onto his Broomfield article to find out his opinion of the film.

To be fair to Mr Robey he wasn’t particularly impressed with it either technically or artistically. Of course he was rather sniffy about the Governor’s parents (“all homespun pieties” with “an impressive mountain of antlers in their yard”) and ended up with the usual stuff about the significance of “approval ratings” more than a year before an election but hey…what do you expect – he’s a film critic and it’s the Daily Telegraph for crying out loud….par for the course…

But then I read this..

There’s something creepy, for sure, about the fierce guarding of Palin’s reputation in town

…and I thought creepy? He thinks it’s creepy for people in Wasilla to treat Broomfield like something unpleasant stuck on the sole of your shoe?

So I looked up Mr Robey’s profile at the Telegraph, couldn’t get that word out of my head and took off for Planet Twitter

TheAgedP The Aged P The creepy @trim_obey at UK Telegraph creepily predictable on Broomfields Palin film (which bombed even with US left)tgr.ph/olVclY

Which prompted a reply which I initially regarded as hilarious but on further reflection seemed to be rather sad….

trim_obey Tim Robey @TheAgedP Why am I creepy? I’m hardly pro Palin, if that’s your insinuation.

He had assumed, I fancy, that I was some sort of lefty wingnut who had felt he was being too soft on her. Did he suddenly have visions of being cold shouldered at the next North London dinner party or struck off the BBC Newsnight invitation list for being a crypto Tea Partier or, even worse, another David Starkey?

Worrying….

What had triggered my response, however, was the fact that, although he had regarded the film’s technical and artistic values as rather shallow, Mr Robey had appeared to accept, at face value, Broomfields presentation of “the facts”

Gradually, though, the gossip they dig up from erstwhile friends and campaign managers – giving the lie to popularity-boosting Palin myths about her sports prowess and family life – prompts the communal cold shoulder.

I thought that was a sloppy piece of journalism, especially when I recollected what The New York Magazine had said about Broomfield in their review

• Broomfield wants to show what a superficial individual Palin is, so he includes a sequence about her alleged plastic surgery and Bump-it hairdo. Ah, sexist and inconsequential! Point: Palin!
• Broomfield attempts to highlight the suffering Palin caused others by introducing scandal after scandal, then cutting to a shot of its victims trashing Palin. The result: Regardless of the viability of their grievances, her enemies just look like spurned brats. Point: Palin!
• To try to paint a compelling portrait of Palin’s two-faced, evil nature, Broomfield regurgitates just about every blog post from the last three years, throws in clips of the Katie Couric interview (which at this point would put even Rachel Maddow to sleep), and digs into the revelation that Palin wasn’t actually nicknamed “Barracuda” because of her intensity on the high school basketball court, but rather because she liked the Heart song of the same name. Point: Palin!

The NYM is the newssheet of anyone who is anything in the hip cultural elite of US media, more Tina Brown than Tina Brown herself, light years from Wasilla and as Palin unfriendly as you can get – yet even they smelt something fishy about Broomfield.

Which is why I tweeted this

TheAgedP The Aged P @trim_obey a more honest review from a source that could never be described as Palin friendly http://bit.ly/r6LvKb

This obviously touched a nerve.

trim_obey Tim Robey @TheAgedP Perhaps that’s me being credulous, which you’re more than welcome to argue, but I don’t see how it’s dishonest.

There were further exchanges between us of a similar nature but I hope you get the drift of the debate, such as it was. There was, of course, no resolution. Mr Robey could obviously not accept my point that anyone who gets paid, probably quite generously, for writing in the public prints, needs to do a little of what R S McCain calls shoeleather on a topic or, at the very least, employ that golden “get out of jail” card of every hack – the word “alleged”

Should I have bothered? Was it worth all the hassle? I think it was. People like Sarah Palin, Herman Cain, Margaret Thatcher and other conservatives unafraid to challenge the assumptions held dear by a media/academic elite overwhelmingly imbued with the ideas of the liberal left will always have to endure the prospect of death by a thousand cuts – phrases, comments slipped so often into discourse that, Lysenko like, they become accepted as truisms. The beauty of the internet is that, at last, the journalists can be held to account. With a much smaller megaphone, of course, but at least something can be heard – though Mr Robey might not agree

trim_obey Tim Robey @TheAgedP Yes, I’m sure my media career is finished. Good luck with yours.

Heh – as Prof Reynolds would say – how about that Army of Davids?

PS…..I am distraught – I have been crucified by Guy Lodge himself…..

@GuyLodge:@TheAgedP @trim_obey What’s creepy about this back-and-forth, if I may, isn’t anyone’s stance on Palin, honestly influenced or otherwise…. It’s that you’d use a fairly coolly argued review as a springboard for a personal attack on someone you don’t know.

..as distinct from “a fairly coolly argued review” which implies that someone he doesn’t know who has a political background with which he appears to be totally unfamiliar has not discouraged untruths about herself for political gain, Mr Lodge?

Heh….

Sarah Palin could be set to lose both her marriage and her political career after the release of the explosive biography on the Tea Party darling.

warbles airhead hackette Rachel Quigley ( @rachelq82 ) at the UK Daily Mail, referring to the recently published “book” about Palin written by Joe McGinniss. Quigley proceeds to list several of the allegations mentioned in the book and also references articles from the “National Enquirer”, an American supermarket tabloid.

With McGinniss being spit roasted even by such Palin unfriendly sources as The New York Times and Michael Smerconish one might fairly ask of Ms Quigley why she wasn’t a little more curious about the author’s credibility and motivation.

But then elsewhere the Mail publishes a vomit inducing puff piece which essentially allows McGinniss to offer a weasel defence against the criticism of the unattributable nature of his “sources” and you then begin to realise why a third rate scribbler like Quigley was wheeled in to pen such unmitigated rubbish.

She was probably ordered to write it (most likely in crayon on a large sheet of drawing paper) by the mysoginistic editor Paul Dacre who believes that women are best suited to be in the Mail’s right hand side bar to be ogled or derided for their appearance while the chaps do the heavy lifting of running the world.

Unlike the Mail, which has ever been a rag, the UK Daily Telegraph has always claimed to be a serious paper of repute. But the DT has consistently and gleefully treated Palin with a degree of contempt and disdain that almost rivals that shown by the liberal left media of the USA. So they have put their own third rate scribbler, Nick Allen ( @nickallen789 ), on the McGinniss beat with instructions to keep the pot boiling.

A few days ago Mr Allen was as high on his McGinniss crack as Rachel Quigley, prophesying that the book would destroy Palin’s political career. But sadly even the myopic Allen had to weave an element of truth into his National Enquirer musings when he was forced to admit that there was some evidence that support for her was growing rather than crashing.

We now await with bated breath how ace reporters Quigley and Allen react to the latest evidence which tends to buttress the belief, widely held outside the medieval chambers of the Mail and Telegraph, that McGinniss is merely pimping the delusions, lies and unfounded rumours being constantly recycled along the wilder shores of the blogosphere by a group of dysfunctional misfits…..

Is that crickets I hear?

Sarah Palin, the former Republican Vice-Presidential candidate, has been hit by lurid allegations that she had a fling with a basketball player just before she got married and took cocaine while out snowmobiling.

Thus burbles ace reporter Nick Allen, the UK Daily Telegraph’s Los Angeles correspondent.

But then we get a clue about how much shoe leather the intrepid Mr Allen expended in his quest for the truth

According to reports in the United States the claims will be contained in a highly critical book by author Joe McGinniss which is due to be published next week.

“According to reports” – in other words Nick had a few spare minutes over breakfast, trawled Google News then regurgitated stuff he picked up from a publisher’s PR blurb and a hit piece from the New York Daily News.

Lurid allegations by a serious author….please Mr Allen…I think you might have been snorting something white and powdery yourself. The “serious author” has concocted his “book” from a collection of quotes from anonymous sources garnered via conversations with a group of rumour mongers and liars from the fringe left blogosphere in Alaska, most of whom began to spew forth this rubbish after she was nominated for VP in August 2008….coincidence? Ask Pete Rouse at Team Obama.

For a better informed viewpoint on this heap of garbage go to the New York Times, a paper that could never be in a million years described as friendly to Palin. The author has not only read the book but has also done a little research into Alaskan politics. Suffice to say even the liberal NYT reviewer suggests the rubbish bin as the appropriate destination for the McGinniss epic.

Mr. McGinniss explains that he was shocked, just shocked, at the angry response his presence in Wasilla provoked. But “The Rogue” makes the Palins’ widely publicized anger understandable, even to readers who might have defended his right to set up shop in their neighborhood and soak up the local color. Although most of “The Rogue” is dated, petty and easily available to anyone with Internet access, Mr. McGinniss used his time in Alaska to chase caustic, unsubstantiated gossip about the Palins, often from unnamed sources like “one resident” and “a friend.”

Come to think of it there would probably be room in the bin for the Daily Telegraph as well. It used to be an informed and serious paper until taken over by the secretive Barclay twins who proceeded to fire all the experienced staff in order to replace them with malleable hacks like Mr Allen who are quite happy to scribble PR puffs for the Barclays masquerading as news reports.

You know, methinks Joe McGinniss would fit into the Barclaygraph rather well…..especially after reading this from Robert Stacy McCain and this from Professor Jacobson at Legal Insurrection.

The BBC’s Jonny Dymond has been sounding out some of the usual suspects from the US liberal left over their reaction to the News of the World phone hacking affair.

The top brass at the Beeb have obviously got the nod from their friends at the New York Times (“the Democratic Party at prayer”) that the Obama machine is very interested in the possibility of slipping a knife between Murdoch’s ribs and defenestrating Fox News. Dymond, therefore, was temporarily withdrawn from the Tea Party=militias=KKK =racism desk at AgitProp HQ and ordered to link up with the planners at Operation Fox Hunter.

Washington correspondent Jonny Dymond reports on whether any “bad habits have slipped over to the Atlantic”

Jonny isn’t talking about his own bad habits of slipping things across borders… Lithuanian customs officers still have him on file. Nor was he talking about CNN’s Piers Morgan’s habits because, so far, the BBC doesn’t appear to be too interested in a left wing tabloid not owned by Murdoch.

No – we are now reaching what I predicted was the most important item on the agenda…..the preparation of a full frontal attack on Fox News.

Others with noses closer to the DC beltway have also been sniffing the air, particularly the UK Telegraph’s Toby Harnden. He tried for ages to get a feel on the Murdoch/USA issue from Obama apparatchiks in Congress and the White House but kept on getting blanked.

They were all waiting for Valerie Jarrett to tell Obama what his decision would be.

It was a go.

Straight away Sen Jay Rockefeller had new batteries inserted and was wheeled out to transmit the official party line.

SEIU is almost certainly being fed more Soros money to add to it’s taxpayer funded coffers in order to organise “spontaneous” demonstrations of anger outside Fox properties. “Independent” op-ed scribblers at NYT and WaPo have received templates for their thoughtful “fairness” pieces.

I called this Dan Rather’s revenge not because it was Fox that pulled that neat little trick. Fox is too timid to operate behind enemy lines like the right blogosphere. Fox’s importance is to act, like the UK’s Mail and Sun, as a counter balance to the distortion of the news as it is passed through the left wing filters of the establishment media. The right blogosphere’s role is to dig up the evidence for the lies, corruption and hypocrisy of the left’s mouthpieces in New York, Hollywood and elsewhere.

Unlike Chappaquidick and the NYT/Guardian Wikileaks campaign nobody has been killed as a result of News of the World phone hacking. Yes it was unsavoury and seedy – but that is the nature of journalism. It’s a competitive dog eat dog world where you are only as good as your last story – just like Hollywood, politics and drug dealing. So the key to fighting the forthcoming onslaught is not to excuse the activities that took place several years ago under the Blair/Brown Labour government that refused to take action because at the time they were supported by the Murdoch press.

The line to take is to condemn all dirty tricks then follow up with just a representative sample of nefarious activities undertaken by the Democrats and their surrogates over the last ten years….you’ll be spoiled for choice.

Then, as was once suggested by a certain Chicago Light Bringer, get in their faces.

The big question is – what will the GOP political/media”leadership” do over this? Surely it won’t bolt for cover and hide under the table with its thumb in its mouth while the mob is baying outside the door….will it?

Surely there will be someone who will run to the fight – with a smile and a rapier….

Celia Walden at the DT tells us all exactly what we want to know – how Hollywood awaits Will and Kate with bated breath and botoxed cheeks.

It really is a toss up as to who writes the the biggest amount of Polly Filla guff in the Daily Telegraph….Celia Walden or Bryony Gordon. Of course perhaps neither of them actually exist. Instead there might be an IT programme called “Breathless Brown Noser” originally developed at CNN towards the end of 2008 for items about the Obamas and Clintons.

The programme generates well worn adoration clichés by itself – all the operator has to do is insert specific “celebrity” names which then appear to imply that the “writer” is also a regular at these events while we, the ordinary public, are like the poor kids with our noses pressed against the window watching the gods and goddesses at play.

Maybe Celia and Bryony aren’t real people getting paid six figure salaries for scribbling crapola. Instead – given the massive downsizing tsunami accompanying the Telegraph’s transformation into the Daily Mail for Waitrose shoppers – it’s all being done by a seedy, sweaty tabloid hack on a supermarket shelfstackers wages.

The tragedy is that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge do appear to be a genuinely nice young couple, attractive and lively who have caught the imagination of millions across the globe.

In a world often overshadowed by grim economic forecasts and the threats of death cult fanatics they symbolise the portents of an alternative more optimistic future.

Of course they are not Ordinary People Like Us. Kate was once but she is now in a different world.

Of course the photos and TV clips are embellishments of artifice – but so is almost everything else we see in the media. It’s a World of Spin, folks where even Guardianistas like Polly(Tuscany villas) Toynbee pretend to be against the toffs.

But put it this way –who would you rather see your kids and grandkids take as role models for their future, the royal couple or the narcissistic posturing PR puffed nebbishes of Hollywood and the right hand sidebar of the Daily Mail?

They deserve better than airhead Walden and her Hello style ramblings. But, let’s face it, the once mighty Daily Telegraph has followed along the primrose path to perdition by converting itself into a gossip rag. Thank goodness I gave up wasting money on buying this dross and just peruse it online for free. Rumours of a DT paywall still float around. It would indeed give me a perverse feeling of delight to refuse to contribute to the household accounts of dimwits like Walden and Gordon.

Alex Spillius must have “do a monthly hit piece on Sarah Palin” written into his UK Daily Telegraph contract

Supporters of Sarah Palin have attempted to edit the Wikipedia page on Paul Revere, the War of Independence hero, after glaring historical errors the White House hopeful made during her tour to Boston last week.

Indeed he implies that it might have even been one of her aides who tried to tamper with Wikipedia.

The oddest thing about this piece, though, is not the fact that Spillius fell into the Palin Trap by relying on Longfellow rather than doing a bit of research (actually he probably didn’t even go to his poetry book, just took his usual cue from the US media) but his characterisation of the bus tour. You would never guess that even CNN was admitting that Palin scored a home run with this project or that the latest poll was putting her as joint front runner for the GOP nomination. Spillius paints it as a feeble attempt scuppered by her own “ignorance”

Do you know what annoys me the most? Not that this guy writes a hit piece on Palin’s “gaffe” which backfires on him.

Can a leopard change it’s spots?

Can a weasel change it’s teeth?

Of course not.

It’s the fact that he gets paid large dollops of gelt for doing it.

Pass the sick bag, Alice….

….because the British press will stitch you up and hang you out to dry.

25 year old Jo Yeates was last seen in Bristol on December 17th. Two days later her boy friend returned from a visit to relatives and reported her missing. On Christmas morning dog walkers discovered her body three miles from the flat which she and her boy friend rented from Christopher Jefferies.

On December 30th Jefferies was arrested by police on suspicion of murdering Miss Yeates.

Within a matter of hours his picture was on the front page of almost every British newspaper

. He was described as “weird”, “lewd”, “strange”, “creepy”, “angry”, “odd”, “disturbing”, “eccentric”, “a loner” and “unusual” in the course of just one article. That the former English teacher should have liked the classic Oscar Wilde poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol was described by one article as “Chris Jefferies’ favourite poem was about killing wife”. That the teacher should have taught pupils about the horror of the Holocaust and a classic novel by Wilkie Collins was described as him being “obsessed with death”. He was accused of being a ‘peeping tom’ by people who never made a complaint to police about his activities.

The tabloids (The Sun, Daily Mirror, Daily Mail etc) took the lead on this but the upmarket Daily Telegraph pushed a similar nudge/nudge, wink/wink storyline.

In the 1970s he began teaching English at Clifton College in Bristol, a £9,000-a-term public school, and quickly made waves with his flamboyant style and passion for poetry. A lifelong bachelor, colleagues speculated that he may be homosexual. Former pupils recalled that he preferred the verse of Percy Shelley, the Romantic poet known for his dark, Gothic themes, to the plays of Shakespeare.
To some pupils, he was an inspiration and part of the “fabric of the school”. Others, however, nicknamed him “The Strange Mr Jefferies”, and remembered him for his short temper and autocratic style. One of his students said: “He was a stickler for discipline and was very traditional. He used to get very angry and shout and throw books and pens across the room.
“He used to touch people’s hands and he’d say, ‘Oh you’re very sweaty. That means you’re sexually active’. He was very flamboyant, the way he talked, walked and acted. I think the girls were more creeped out than the boys. He was weird.” Mr Jefferies began a film society at the school, with a particular focus on international cinema. James Alvis, a sports teacher and student at Clifton College in the 1980s, said: “He showed some dark films, he was particularly keen on French films.”

Lifelong bachelor, passion for poetry, short tempered, flamboyant, keen on French films….notice how these phrases are carefully crafted to present an image of sinister intent.

Jefferies was questioned for two days then released on police bail.

Three weeks later a Dutch engineer Vincent Tabak, 33, also a tenant of Christopher Jefferies, was charged with her murder. At the beginning of May he pleaded guilty at a preliminary hearing with a trial set probably for October.

So the case has moved on but Jefferies remains embittered by his treatment by the police and the media and has announced his intention to sue both Avon & Somerset Police and several neswpapers.

Good for him.

Even better news

The High Court today granted the Attorney General’s Office permission to bring contempt of court proceedings against The Sun and the Daily Mirror over their coverage of murdered architect Joanna Yeates and her landlord Chris Jefferies.
The Attorney General Dominic Grieve QC claims the publication of two reports by the Mirror and one by The Sun following Jefferies’ arrest last year created a risk of prejudicing any future trial.

At the very moment the rich and powerful are using expensive lawyers to secure superinjunctions against anybody reporting their alleged misdeeds a completely private individual’s reputation has been indelibly smeared by media innuendo merely for being a rather eccentric loner.

Scared off by the wealthy and their gold hungry legal hacks but contemptuous of ordinary folk without influence – that’s the UK media.

Editors in jail? Millions in fines? Possible but not likely.

Still one can always hope……