Thursday 21 December 2017

Damian Green - Done Up Like A Kipper

The newpapers don't know quite what to say about Damian Green.  I suspect a couple of things are going through editorial minds.  

(a) They probably assume there's a very technical basis on which May probably does have to let him go - an ill-judged lack of candour in an overall context of post-Weinstein and anti-Tory sentiment.  Does anyone really know the content of his hard drive (if I may use that expression)?  Oh yes: a bitter ex-copper who behaved outrageously back in 2008 and is unreformed to this day - hopefully with some serious trouble of his own to face in due course.  Still, ministerial code is ministerial code.

(b) They probably know Green personally (as do I - I've known him for 40 years).  It is of course possible to misjudge someone, but ...  They've also quite possibly encountered the young lady in the story (as have I), given her penchant for self-promotion; and maybe they are able to form a view.

Yes, for an event of this magnitude it's all rather quiet on the editorial front.

Still, when a government is down, it's down.  Probably gets worse before it gets better.  One of May's few world-class virtues is her ability to stand up straight and get on with it.  A virtue indeed when half the game is to keep afloat for another 4 years and let various storms blow themselves out.  I just hope that in her hour(s) of weakness she doesn't (as some assert) slip back to calling on Nicholas Timothy - a man whom, like George Osborne, we never want to see or hear from again.  Ever.

ND

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Green should have admitted to having porn on his computer, as it was apparently all legal type porn. Embarassing but he might well have got away with it -- after all, a great many people have some porn on their computers.

What did for him was telling silly fibs.

CityUnslicker said...

crazy to lose ministers this way though, these are not spy scandals. The Country will regret in time losing the likes of Fallon and Green over nothings.

John in Cheshire said...

This whole matter has a smell about it and add is too often the case, the Met is at the heart of it.

It seems to me they are part of our swamp and need to be drained.

dustybloke said...

Labour are reaping the reward for seeding the public sector and charities with lefties. The new leftie intake in the Old Bill of the last 20 years are firmly in the driving seat and the country is worse for it.

Electro-Kevin said...

Porn on our computers is a summary sacking offence - not lying about it but just having it.

I stick to my personal PC for Lady Sonya, Brazzers and Over Forties Gilf stuff.

Raedwald said...

The point is he's been sent off on a technicality. NOT for having porn on his computer - which he still denies, but for having denied recently that the plods *told him* he had porn on his computer at the time of the original investigation.

It seems a trivial point, but it's the only one for which the investigation has evidence. And breaches the ministerial code.

No evidence of improper conduct against the woman and no evidence of having porn on his computer - 'not proven'.

BlokeInBrum said...

I have to think that if you are browsing porn at work then clearly you are;

a. Stupid
b. immoral
c. lacking diligence
d. haven't got enough work to do.

You would have to hope that those in Parliament who make our laws and scrutinise legislation would have at least a shred of integrity.

Many workplaces (especially if they are small) have a relaxed attitude to computer use at work. But if it's something you would be embarrassed show your co-workers or have made public, then you shouldn't be doing it.

Anonymous said...

He gambled on making a lie and lost.

If someone is blatantly out to get you, you do not provide them any rope let alone make some into a lovely noose and treat it as a neck accessory.

I'm disappointed that a Minister would be so stupid, even more that they're not being given any decent advice to tackle these situations.

andrew said...


CU

lying is not nothings.

He should have fessed up and said it was long long ago on a pc that is now far far away and the plod have it in for me and how is that right - turn the spotlight on the retired copper and general police dodgyness pace manchester and all that evidence of innocence that the plod decided was not relevant in other cases but somehow a retired cop keeps his old notebooks...

FFS trump got away with much worse.




CityUnslicker said...

EK - MP's are self-employed and have not contract or official work to do. you literally can't get sacked for being an MP except by the electorate.

The comparison to us office worker scum is not the right one.

To a self-employed plumber is a better one

andrew said...

Ek
What is a brazzer and why do you need more than one?

Graeme said...

Lady Sonia... Good egg. DHLawrence really tapped class-divide eroticism! And Lady S is totally Uber when it comes down to it

Steven_L said...

Well I reckon since MP's make the laws affecting porn and the internet, they should probably keep abreast of online porn.

The law should apply equally course. They have, quite rightly, banned child porn so they should be as guilty as the man on the street for looking at that.

But as for all the legal porn freely and legally available to the electorate, you could argue they have a duty to look at it, just as coppers sometimes have a duty to view the illegal variety.

Anonymous said...

Green is somewhat foolish to deny knowing about the hard drive contents. But what's more troubling is the thought that when the police or a civvy technician comes round to investigate Crime A, the plod feel entitled to reveal Embarrassing Fact B or C if they discover such during their search.

"Now sir, you say your wife's jewellery was taken from the bottom bedroom drawer, and the scene is as you found it?"

"Why yes, officer, I've left it just as it was"

"I see ... lets have a look ... hmmm... interesting photographs you have here"

"I fail to see what that has to do with a burglary."

"Is that you in the basque?"

Anonymous said...

Decades of positive discrimination in recruitment has seen the Met reduced to a leftist-infested sewer. That the Tories have managed to also royally p*ss off the old guard who've been there for decades means that the organisation is now lost. A politicised, rotten institution more interested in fitting up innocent men on rape charges and getting Tory ministers sacked than it is in upholding the law.

Anonymous said...

Anon: "Green should have admitted to having porn on his computer, as it was apparently all legal type porn."

Exactly.

Salacious pictures of nude women. So what? Reputedly, the porn industry was the impetus for the development of the multimedia aspect of the internet, and drove Playboy and Mayfair from the top shelf of the newsagent to near obscurity.