SMT Online Editor's View: Tell me, Miss Smith... 'Did you know?'

19 Dec 08

Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather (not) when I discovered yesterday - along with the rest of the general populus - that the case against Tory MP Damian Green is going to be dropped following an exhaustive investigation conducted by Ian Johnston, the fine British Transport Police chief constable and SMT Online Editorial Board Member.

This tawdry episode has left a very bitter taste in the mouths of many, not least my own. It's a travesty and an outrage that said politician has had to endure such sufferance for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

Mind you, not so long ago our so-called Government brought us to war in the Middle East on a totally false premise, so why should the blackening of an innocent man's name be a problem for its collective conscience?

God knows, even some Cabinet ministers have privately expressed serious concern over the heavy-handed manner in which Mr Green was treated. I am 100 per cent supportive of all our honourable policemen and women right across the British Isles, but how can you defend a force that behaves in such an extraordinary manner?

I've never been a great fan of Harriet Harman, but she has had the good grace to distance herself from the Home Secretary over this latest trauma devised by 'New Blunder' in a shameful bid to lessen the Opposition's chances at the General Election.

Upholding police independence

Throughout, Jacqui Smith has been at pains to condemn the treatment of David Cameron's migration spokesman, insisting all the while that ministers' first and foremost duty is "to uphold the independence of the police". Smith has also steadfastly denied any knowledge that the Home Office leak investigation was targeting a Tory MP.

Are we expected to believe, then, that all this was going on behind the backs of the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary without either their knowledge and/or say-so? With exactly how much contempt are they treating Joe Public? Surely this is transporting political credibility to the giddy limits?

In the early part of this Yuletide month, New Scotland Yard found itself in meltdown as senior officer upon senior officer began to question the ludicrous and heinous decision to target Damian Green.

Then an archive video clip of Good Old Gordon surfaces, as if summoned for an episode of Noel Edmonds' old quiz show Telly Addicts. A July 1995 edition of BBC Breakfast, no less, showed unequivocally how the (then) opposition trade and industry spokesperson furthered his career with the aid of so-called 'political dark arts'.

Brown procured sensitive information about supplementary benefits from a Whitehall 'mole'. "I was given the figures by a civil servant who was as concerned as myself about a Government that misleads people."

My God. How rich is that? Pot, Kettle, Black, eh Gordon?

If this latest approach to 'Big Brother policing' had been around in the early 1990s, it's a fair assumption that Mr Brown and many more - not to say all - of his cronies in Westminster would have spent a modicum of their time in a box room being cross-examined at Her Majesty's Constabulary's pleasure.

Miss Smith's denial of any advanced knowledge has been seriously challenged by the Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve, who all but accuses our Jacqui of dishonesty (bear in mind that it's extremely rare for a Cabinet minister to be pinned with telling outright lies by a front bench spokesperson from the opposition).

"The most important issue at stake concerns what the Home Secretary knew about all of these goings-on," said Grieve. Too true. "I find her answers extremely unconvincing. I think she knew there was an MP involved in this investigation and just decided to sit on her hands."

Further explanations are required

Ultimately, Smith is the person who's accountable to Parliament for failings within the police. It's pretty obvious the Metropolitan Police Service was barking up the wrong tree in pursuing an MP who has done nothing other than his job and conducted his business in a wholly legitimate fashion. That being the case, our Home Secretary and the Met's upper echelons have some explaining to do.

Miss Smith freely admits she was informed at every other key point in the investigation. She was told by her top civil servant Sir David Normington when the leak inquiry was first instigated. Smith was also 'in the know' when the police were first called to hand.

News of junior civil servant Chris Galley's arrest was communicated to her before it ever happened. However, when it comes to the constitutionally seismic matter of Damian Green's detention, we're led to believe this minor occurrence was beyond the Home Secretary's radar.

We're consistently fed the line that the Home Secretary and the Home Office have to maintain operational independence from the Metropolitan Police Service but, given what has happened of late, can we really still believe this status quo's alive and kicking?

For his part, Sir Paul Stephenson - acting commissioner of the Met and one of the 'Gang of Four' seemingly in line for the role full-time (more of which anon) - has every reason to ingratiate himself with the Home Secretary.

He wants the job, does he not, and it's her decision who's allowed to sign on the dotted line in a bid to repair the quagmire left behind by Sir Ian Blair - a man damned by association for his overtly slavish devotion to all things New Labour.

Miss Smith may not have known the timing of Damian Green's arrest, but for many the notion she had no inkling it was on the horizon places credulity somewhere on the south side of Mars.

Plenty of political commentators would say that if the Home Secretary didn't want to know the fine details of 'when and how' Mr Green was to be summarily pounced upon then it's merely because she simply didn't wish to know.

Language of the gutter

Indulge me while I digress for a moment, but whomever in the Met worked up the term 'grooming' in relation to Mr Green's alleged indiscretions needs to be taken aside and torn off a strip. The word was deployed during Green's interrogation by detectives, most probably in a thinly-disguised attempt to provoke him.

Tactics like this are deplorable. It's the language of the gutter, and terminology that doesn't belong within the ranks of the Boys in Blue. No wonder so many have lost respect for those empowered with maintaining law and order.

Ultimately, Sir Paul Stephenson openly allowed the Metropolitan Police Service to be complicit in the political intimidation of an honest and innocent man who was merely doing his rightful duty on behalf of Queen and Country. On that basis, I would suggest Sir Paul shouldn't be tasked with restoring the Met's reputation.

In a similar vein, Michael Martin's role as Speaker in the House is now under a heavy cloud after he seemingly condoned the ransacking of an MP's office by police officers without benefit of search warrant. Left unchecked, that episode alone has the potential to set a massively dangerous precedent.

New Scotland Yard is in desperate need of resolute, determined and completely independent leadership. The only problem is this: how can genuine independence be guaranteed if the job of Metropolitan Police Service Commissioner remains in the gift of the Home Secretary?

Damian Green's arrest should ring alarm bells for every citizen of the UK who places a high value on democratic freedom and justice. In effect, democracy itself was arrested. Are all Parliamentarians now likely to face police capture and intimidation when they have the audacity to expose the Government's all-too-many failings?

Or can all of the major parties now expect police back-up if and when they harbour the merest suspicion that foul play has taken place?

If so, where is the investigation into misconduct in public office concerning the manner in which the Hinduja brothers obtained their UK citizenship in, shall we say, a rather 'unique' set of circumstances?

And where is the investigation into Tony Blair's intervention that saw an exemption for Formula One from the ban on tobacco advertising just after the bespectacled F1 chief Bernie Ecclestone had donated a fat £1 million gift to the (then) Prime Minister's tribe?

Nor should we ever be forgetting the sequence of events that led to the tragic and completely unnecessary death of Dr David Kelly.

Damian Green has never even come close to being charged with 'misconduct in public office'. He's not guilty, that's why. It's difficult to say the same about the Government of the Day, though.

In Unelected Brown's Britain, dissent has been overwhelmingly suppressed and freedom of speech shut down for good. It's one rule for them and another for the rest of us downtrodden souls.

The end for overtime?

11.00 am on Wednesday morning, the seventeenth day of December in the year 2008, could prove to be a landmark for the security sector. By a majority of 421 votes for versus 273 against, members of the European Parliament voted to scrap Britain's opt-out from the Working Time Directive.

If you scanned my last SMT Online Editor's View, you'll know that I'm fully in favour of that decision which, if all the I's are dotted and T's crossed, will come into force in 2011.

You'll not be surprised to learn that Wilson James' director and BSIA chairman Stuart Lowden agrees with me. He said as much during the Make The Change debate conducted at the Skills for Security National Training Conference in Oxford last month.

Britain is now under huge pressure to either surrender the opt-out or at least draw up a timetable for it to be phased out. Whatever our politicians decide, a summit of EU chiefs is being convened to settle the issue once and for all.

The final decision - which is likely to be made next Spring - would be taken by way of a qualified majority vote, leaving Britain without a veto.

As you'd expect, the decision has outraged business leaders, including CBI deputy director-general John Cridland and David Frost, director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce.

Commercial tsars are suggesting the vote shows how MEPs - pampered with substantial salaries, lots of perks and humungous pensions - are suffering from a 'disconnect' with economic reality.

"This decision sends out the wrong signals to the rest of the world," claimed Frost in yesterday morning's national newspapers. "We desperately need to show that the UK is open for business."

According to Government figures, more than three million UK workers - over 10% of all those employed - are at their place of employment for more than 48 hours every week.

It's all well and good for Mr Cridland to quote that statistic in his press releases and wax lyrical about "workers who want to go the extra mile and work longer hours to do so", but how many of those three million WANT to work more than 48 hours rather than HAVE to work these hours? That's the $64,000 question.

In the security sector, thousands of operatives HAVE to work more than 48 hours because, for a whole host of risible reasons, their basic pay is so lousy there's little choice if they want to make ends meet.

Don't get me wrong. I'm no fan of the fact that those who have proven themselves utter failures within the British political system are now sitting on the fat of the land in Brussels, but on this occasion the MEPs have it right.

Their decision is an early Christmas present for some of this country's hardest workers - the downtrodden and often disgracefully disrespected security officers - and for the families who see far too little of them as they risk life and limb in the ongoing cause of protecting UK plc.

Stop and search, stop and search

Quite rightly, people around the globe recoiled in horror at the tragic events that unfolded in Mumbai a few short weeks ago. People all over the world with the exception of the UK, it seemed.

Even though several Brits were caught up in the atrocities, many of those on home shores believed Mumbai to be nothing to do with us. Clearly, we're not even beginning to grasp the threat facing the free world.

The closest attention possible must be paid to what happened in Mumbai because it's highly likely that something similar could take place here at any time. More than a few experts have said as much.

Put simply, a war is being raged against civilisation itself. That war is both global and local in nature. Hostages were taken in Mumbai but, rather than being used as a bargaining tool, they were casually slaughtered. For sure, the terrorists' agenda was - and is - non-negotiable.

The Prime Minister has stated that the attacks in India have raised massive questions in terms of how the world is (and should be) dealing with violent extremism. The British approach to said problem has to change, and fast.

We are woefully unprepared for attacks of this nature, and still blind to the fact that - whether The PC Brigade like it or not - we're in the deepest throes of a conflict based on religious beliefs.

Thankfully, positive steps are being taken to defeat the terrorists. On Wednesday morning I was running a little late and, having missed my usual GreenLine coach to the City, I was forced to take the last commuter 'special' from Hemel Hempstead into the West End.

We'd nearly reached the end of the M1 when I noticed some blue lights flashing alongside us, then the coach was diverted into London Gateway Services by a British Transport Police car.

This kind of thing happens every so often such that the police can perform an impromptu MOT on the coaches, making sure they don't harbour bald tyres and that the road tax hasn't run out. However, this time around it was a different story.

The police were out in numbers. Six officers jumped aboard and informed us that the coach, its contents, driver and passengers would all be subject to search under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

We were shepherded to a waiting room in the Services where officers questioned us and searched our bags. There were sniffer dogs checking for explosives.

The Metropolitan Police officers handed out leaflets explaining what was happening and why. "Stop and search under the Terrorism Act 2000 can disrupt, deter and prevent terrorist activity," said the leaflet, "and create a hostile environment for the terrorists' operations.

"We understand being stopped and searched by the police may cause an inconvenience and, sometimes, distress, but it's our duty to protect all Londoners from terrorism. Your patience and understanding actively helps us to do this."

One idiot who was gradually becoming hot under his pin-striped collar piped up: "Are you going to compensate me for loss of earnings?" No, the police will not do that, Lord Snooty, and nor should they.

Still, if you'd rather lose your life than be five minutes late for Ms Palmer to bring in your tea while you read the FT to see how your shares are doing then you just carry on squaring up to those who want to protect your liberty and person.

Lining up for the Yard

Speaking of the Met, the nine candidates who threw their hat into the ring for the Commissioner's job at New Scotland Yard have now been whittled down to four.

As I've said, I don't think Sir Paul Stephenson should be in the frame. That leaves Sir Hugh Orde, the chief constable of Northern Ireland, West Midlands police chief Sir Paul Scott-Lee, and Bernard Hogan-Howe, the excellent chief constable of Merseyside Police.

My stance hasn't changed since the last time I aired my opinions on this matter in early October's SMT Editor's View. If he can stand the vile stench of financial and political corruption that pervades the Capital, and at the same time distance himself from the clowns in Westminster, Hogan-Howe is the man for the job.

His concept of 'Total Policing' has been a touch of managerial genius and intuitiveness, with paper-based theory driven through to fashion tangible and astonishingly impressive and meaningful results.

That's pretty much what London needs now - as well as a Commissioner who's not determined to be in the back pocket of the Cabinet.

Rocking around the Christmas Tree

Unless - like my good self - you're a fully paid up member of the Heavy Metal fraternity, the practice (some would say 'art') of headbanging has always been construed as a rather ridiculous custom. One to be ridiculed and laughed at in equal measure.

Worryingly for us 'meatheads', a study just published in the Christmas edition of the British Medical Journal Online suggests that headbanging is not only silly but downright dangerous.

Yes, that's right folks. Rocking your head back and forth in metronomic equilibrium with the band of your choice - in my case British metal legends Iron Maiden - can damage your health.

The faster the song, it seems, the greater the chances of neck injury, incessant headaches and dizziness. The quacks are even suggesting that neck braces could be the next must-have accessory when we pitch up at the Glasgow SECC for another dose of Metallica or Whitesnake (I'll leave my other favourite combo Marillion free from inclusion here, because although they've always been referred to as a Scottish Heavy Metal Band the reality of the situation is somewhat different - as any member of the Web UK fan club or the Marillion Online Forum will happily tell you!)

I can see it now, though. Thousands of metallers queueing in disorderly fashion at the merch desk for their branded neck brace. Black of hue, of course, and probably adorned by numerous studs and chains, not to mention the obligatory skull insignias.

The study, conducted by researchers Down Under at the University of New South Wales, has found an increasing risk of neck injury beginning at tempos of 130 beats per minute. God help the fans of Slayer, then. They'll be dead before the opening number's out!

Professor Andrew McIntosh has been quoted as saying: "Headbangers really are at great risk of head and neck injuries. They should actively decrease their range of head and neck motions. They could headbang to slower tempo songs by replacing heavy metal with adult-oriented rock, thereby only headbanging to every second beat."

Well if you think I'm going to ditch 'the Maiden' for Peter Cetera and Foreigner, mate, you've got another thing coming! I'd rather be locked in a darkened room and forced to listen to Black Lace or Radiohead for a week.

Anyway, we like Heavy Metal on info4security and SMT Online. AC/DC, Thin Lizzy, Maiden. They've all made an appearance in the Songs About Security strand. Not all my own suggestions, either. You can ask Anthony!

Well, folks, that rather surreal item wraps up my last SMT Online Editor's View for 2008. I hope you've enjoyed reading these explosions of thought. I've certainly relished researching and writing them, and I'm looking forward to doing so once again many, many more times in 2009 and beyond.

For now, though, it merely remains for me to wish all of SMT Online's avid readers a Merry Christmas and a very happy and prosperous New Year.

Until next time.

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