Don't you love the tired old ways media publishes lies? Well placed sources are usually non existent or, at best, badly placed sauces.

But very rapidly the focus is beginning on police behaviour, ranging from astonishing incompetence and laziness (often, like well placed sources, habit) to deliberate lying and criminal fraud. Investigating crime has turned, in many cases, to provoking, encouraging and starting crime. There are so many police officers in jail now they can no longer be described as hiding in plain sight.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4239328...opolitan-Police.html

Worth looking back...

www.kingofhits.co.uk/component/option,co...d,64/?g2_itemId=3264

From the article by Dominic Lawson:

“This is just the latest legal fiasco resulting from the police’s response to the recognition that Jimmy Savile had abused countless young people for decades, with impunity.”

and:

“This is where the police seem to have had all common sense and even an understanding of what courts can and can’t do. It is a principle of English law that dead people cannot be put on trial.”

But surely the argument put forward in the final paragraph renders the conclusion in the first paragraph a non sequitur, or have I missed something?

I think it is simply that Lawson, like many at the time, assumed Savile MUST have committed the crimes the media claimed. It has taken years for a healthy dose of scepticism to creep into the minds of the public, after years of not only trusting police but the media. Even today you can see (Trump/Brexit) there is a large quantity who eat, digest and excrete fantasies.

Around 2 years and �£2m has been spent in Met police time and funds to discover there was no evidence to support 'Nick's' claims. Yet it has apparently taken Frankfurt police less than 2 weeks to smash recent allegations of sexual impropriety by a group of 50 refugees (also nipping the problem of false news stories in the bud before the chance for them to spread even further).

www.thelocal.de/20170214/mass-sexual-ass...t-completely-made-up

Yes and other forces are far worse than the Met.

When I read "well-placed sources" in the article about Edward Heath, I assumed it meant police officers or people working for the police given the content of the article.

It seems to me that the police are being played for fools and are trying to save face. I wonder how many of the supposedly unconnected people making similar allegations have had their computers/phones, etc. examined to see where they've been online, e.g. to see if they've visited sites making allegations about Edward Heath or have had contact with each other via forums or social media.

Peter wrote:
It is a principle of English law that dead people cannot be put on trial.

Not strictly true ....

Parliament passed an order of attainder for High Treason on the four most prominent deceased regicides: John Bradshaw the court president; Oliver Cromwell; Henry Ireton; and Thomas Pride.

The bodies were exhumed and three were hanged for a day at Tyburn and then beheaded.

The three bodies were then thrown into a pit close to the gallows, while the heads were placed, with Bradshaw's in the middle, at the end of Westminster Hall (the symbolism was lost on no one as that was the building where the trial of Charles I had taken place).[12] Oliver Cromwell's head was finally buried in 1960. The body of Pride was not "punished", perhaps because it had decayed too much.


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posthumous_execution

In The Know (as always !) wrote:
Peter wrote:
It is a principle of English law that dead people cannot be put on trial.

Not strictly true ....

Parliament passed an order of attainder for High Treason on the four most prominent deceased regicides: John Bradshaw the court president; Oliver Cromwell; Henry Ireton; and Thomas Pride.

The bodies were exhumed and three were hanged for a day at Tyburn and then beheaded.

The three bodies were then thrown into a pit close to the gallows, while the heads were placed, with Bradshaw's in the middle, at the end of Westminster Hall (the symbolism was lost on no one as that was the building where the trial of Charles I had taken place).[12] Oliver Cromwell's head was finally buried in 1960. The body of Pride was not "punished", perhaps because it had decayed too much.


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posthumous_execution
Not strictly true ... Dominic Lawson wrote

Charles Moore has summed this psychosis up very admirably in today's Telegraph:

It is reported from “well-placed sources” that the Chief Constable of Wiltshire, Mike Veale, thinks that the late Sir Edward Heath was a paedophile. Mathematically challenged, they say that Mr Veale believes in the allegations against Sir Edward “120 per cent”: the evidence is “totally convincing”. We, the public, are not in a position to gainsay him, since we have seen no evidence. But we can ask why the presumption of innocence – the rule upon which our criminal law is based – is apparently being thrown away by the police when they accuse the dead.

One justification Mr Veale has advanced for this obsessive pursuit of a fairly long deceased former Prime Minister is that some related offenders may still be alive. If that is so, how does he think they could get a fair trial if he or his supporters announce guilt in advance?

The 'well-placed sources’ are behaving like the police officer who said that the child abuse claims of the fantasist “Nick” against Lord Brittan, Field Marshal Lord Bramall and others were “credible and true’” He thus prejudiced further inquiries. The claims turned out to be a pack of lies. The chief constable of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, had to retire early as a result. Mr Veale should now disown the "well-placed sources" if he wishes to avoid a similar fate.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/19/roe-...litical-tool-havent/

It seems to me to be outrageous that a senior police officer such as Mr Veale to assume that there is something morally virtuous in sharing his ugly paedofinding prejudices as if they were the unvarnished truth. In reality, he's acting profoundly unethically, and ought to be reined in and disciplined. It strikes me that he's casually breaking what ought to be a sacrosanct ethical code (an act which therefore ought to be punishable with severe penalties): he draws his salary not for airing his odious "presumption of guilt" fantasies, but for his professional competence as a senior police officer. Police officers, whatever their personal feelings may be, have a duty to investigate allegations of wrongdoing without malice or favour, to the highest standards of neutral, professional conduct.

I can't help contrasting this braying official witchfinder with Freud: Sigmund believed that psychoanalysts had a duty to remain strictly neutral when listening to their patients' free association. "Feelings" like disgust, outrage and even the cuddly ones like empathy and pity, sabotaged the analysis.

What was needed was an absolute adherence to rational analysis. Should an analyst find him- or herself becoming outraged or disgusted, or wanting to 'believe' the patient's account of his or her suffering, he or she was displaying a neurotic and culpable deviation from the fundamental principle of analysis: sober, rational and benevolently sceptical listening.

I see no reason why police officers shouldn't adhere to the same principle, or face disciplinary action. Unlike psychoanalysts (or trapeze artists for that matter), cops can destroy people's reputations and have them locked up.

Great points from Jo, btw: I fully agree

Chief Constable Veale has put out a statement in response to the Mail on Sunday article.
twitter.com/wiltspoliceCC/status/833415648764129281?p=v
www.wiltshire.police.uk/news/3405-chief-...lation#58aa026cf3d5f

A statement that says "I said I wouldn't make any further statement so this statement is not a statement".

It really does boggle the brain. British police have lost the plot. He'll be talking about 120% next!

The presumption of innocence: Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat (the burden of proof is on the one who declares, not on one who denies), is the principle that one is considered innocent unless proven guilty.

The unaccountability that appears to be endemic throughout the senior echelons of the police force in England, has to be challenged. Maybe one solution would be to set up a criminal inquiry into police and CPS behaviour and failings, with particular focus on the damage done to so many individuals and to a society where by now, no-one is safe from historical and current sexual abuse accusations (the typical peak of a witch hunt), even the dead.

Pete outlined several things the police should be doing but patently are not, and several things they should not be doing but are. Any inquiry worth its salt should look into these anomalies. Jo’s point about saving face hits the target I think. From what I can see, the virtual limitless power vested in the police has clearly created an arrogant, egocentric, totalitarian monstrosity. They are not operating on behalf of citizens any more; they are operating on behalf of themselves, and we should all be enraged about that.

And my crusade continues; in many cases police behaviour crosses the line of investigation and becomes conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. When officers conspire to provoke or embellish claims that cannot be proved, they are deliberately conspiring to pervert the course of justice. Whether unintentionally or to appease media critics or to boost budgets or to gain promotion or to get kudos standing on court steps to condemn a convicted person and get on TV - they have assisted or inspired or provoked a crime.

Serious stuff.

pete wrote:


"Feelings" like disgust, outrage and even the cuddly ones like empathy and pity, sabotaged the analysis.

What was needed was an absolute adherence to rational analysis. Should an analyst find him- or herself becoming outraged or disgusted, or wanting to 'believe' the patient's account of his or her suffering, he or she was displaying a neurotic and culpable deviation from the fundamental principle of analysis: sober, rational and benevolently sceptical listening.

pete - Mike Veale's presentation in the video link Bandini posted on the thread Re 120% sure Ted Heath was a… shows him acting rationally and 'in control' when delivering his outrageous statements. There is also something underlying this presentation that I feel is highly defensive, scary and menacing. I certainly wouldn't want to report any offences to him or his cronies to deal with for this reason alone. Don't you think there's also a strong possibility that this witch hunt (or 'Operation' as officially described by the police) is being set-up as a means of hooking their own individual inner frustrations and raging emotions onto some other 'safe' person (deceased seems even safer) or event, well outside their own territory? After all, being aware of, confronting and managing one's own (subjective) emotions and feelings is totally different from outward (objective) expressions of emotion.

md wrote:

pete - Mike Veale's presentation in the video link Bandini posted on the thread Re 120% sure Ted Heath was a… shows him acting rationally and 'in control' when delivering his outrageous statements. There is also something underlying this presentation that I feel is highly defensive, scary and menacing. I certainly wouldn't want to report any offences to him or his cronies to deal with for this reason alone. Don't you think there's also a strong possibility that this witch hunt (or 'Operation' as officially described by the police) is being set-up as a means of hooking their own individual inner frustrations and raging emotions onto some other 'safe' person (deceased seems even safer) or event, well outside their own territory? After all, being aware of, confronting and managing one's own (subjective) emotions and feelings is totally different from outward (objective) expressions of emotion.

I tend to agree with you, md, about the implicit sense of menace Chief Constable Veale’s open message conveyed – proof that implicit but powerful and emotionally-laden messages can still be conveyed precisely when someone appears to be acting rationally and ‘in control.’ I felt he was actually struggling to control a wish to dyspeptically blast critics out of the water for daring to raise questions about this investigation.

Performing a pre-written script in front of a camera, of course, gave him an opportunity to at least partially rein in and conceal his emotions. Yet even so, I thought there were some revealing comments:

“If the force had received allegations of non-recent child abuse against a former Prime Minister and done nothing, what would the reaction have been?

Within the national context of the Independent Inquiry of exploring allegations of institutional failures in the past, Wiltshire Police is duty-bound to record these allegations and launch an impartial and thorough investigation.
(at about 3.12)

This suggests to me that the police in general and Chief Constable Veale in particular are in a panic over what they perceive to be a loss of public confidence in their conduct. They appear to believe that overzealousness is the antidote. Inquisitions are not investigations, a distinction that appears to have been effaced in police thinking.

Fact: this is not a fishing trip or witch hunt. Both of these terms have been unfairly levelled at us. The legal role of the police service is to, on behalf of the public, impartially investigate allegations without fear or favour, and go where the evidence takes us. Critically, it is not the role of the police to judge the guilt or innocence of people in our criminal justice system.
(at about 5.18)

How does he square this with his “120 percent” certainty that the late Mr Heath was a paedophile?

Maintaining the integrity and confidentiality of people who courageously come forward with information also remains an absolute priority for us.
(7.38)

Another potentially dangerous presupposition. I have no problem with police officers treating complainants with the utmost respect and civility; I would expect nothing less. But presuming that all complainants are “courageously coming forward with information” seems to me reckless in the extreme. Some, as JK has repeatedly pointed out, are coming forward for attention (think Karen Matthews), for compo cash, or to share their delusions or boy-raping masturbation fantasies (“Nick” comes to mind).

This investigation may contribute to the wider picture of truth-seeking and reconciliation relating to non-recent child abuse allegations involving institution [sic] settings being led by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.
(9.54)

This “Inquiry” (or Inquisition, as it should more properly be called) strikes me as a deranged and limitless (deranged because limitless) pursuit of more or less deluded or dishonest fantasies, retroactively-generated fake “memories”, lurid tittle-tattle, compo-seeking and, undoubtedly, some truly nasty historic events that in all probability can never be proven to have occurred. I’ll qualify that last sentence by saying that there appear to me to be no safeguards in the inquiry against false allegations, fantasies, lies, inaccurate or confabulated memories. Wanting to contribute to this fiasco is, I fear, a rather dubious ambition: it seems to me to have very little to do with “truth-seeking and reconciliation.”

Further to the publishing of the Henriques Report in relation to Operation Midland, the College of Policing are reviewing the recommendations from that report. Wiltshire Police will monitor the response of the College of Policing, and if there is any subsequent change to the national guidance, the force will adopt this. At this time, the guidance remains unchanged and very clear.”
(10.25)

Am I right in assuming that the phrase “the guidance remains unchanged” is code for “Victims will be believed?” If so, objections on this score have nothing whatever to do with not being possession of all the facts, which Chief Constable Veale uses to dismiss questions raised about this investigation. These objections are about the reversal of the presumption of innocence, and the terrible consequences that can flow from that.

Some cynics always felt that spinsters looked under their beds for rascals more in hope than fear.

JK’s comment …

Some cynics always felt that spinsters looked under their beds for rascals more in hope than fear

... reminded me that I omitted to respond to md’s question:

Don't you think there's also a strong possibility that this witch hunt (or 'Operation' as officially described by the police) is being set-up as a means of hooking their own individual inner frustrations and raging emotions onto some other 'safe' person (deceased seems even safer) or event, well outside their own territory? After all, being aware of, confronting and managing one's own (subjective) emotions and feelings is totally different from outward (objective) expressions of emotion.

I couldn’t have put this any better myself, md. More than a century of psychoanalysis has demonstrated that what Freud called “projection” is endemic amongst these who wish to be seen as impeccably virtuous.

What gets projected? All those ‘dirty’ erotic desires our culture incites in us, along with those awkward malicious tendencies and sadistic inclinations that threaten to subvert the idealised self-image. Those driven to engage in this holier-than-thou virtue signalling are indeed using – exploiting – other people in a deeply unpleasant way: as receptacles for all their dangerous,toxic and unwanted intrapsychic contents.

And they take their cues from the surrounding culture. Once upon a time, a closeted gay puritan who wished to parade his or her moral virtue would denigrate and seek to symbolically destroy (i.e., expel from the social-symbolic order, which is essential to human living) anyone tarnished with the signifier “homosexual.”

Just as the virulently anti-homosexual moral ideology of that era actively produced an army of abjected and permanently stigmatised human beings(many of whom committed suicide after being publicly accused, officially labelled and incarcerated), so the even crazier “anti-paedophile” psychosis of our own times is creating one tidal wave after another of accusations and demolished lives. The best way to arouse fascination in an issue, of course, is to aggressively and very publicly ban it, to call for ‘victims’ to bravely come forward and then launch heresy hunts, all the while assuring them that they ‘will be believed.’

The war against imaginary paedophiles – the new compulsory bogeyman of our times – is I believe promoting mass ‘paedoisation’ of human sensibility, in the Anglophone countries where it’s rampant, at any rate. Many people can’t look at a child or hear the word ‘child’ being mentioned without imagining what a paedophile would be feeling.

The interminable war on imaginary paedophilia is, it seems to me, not only based on a violent denial of the spontaneous sexuality of the young, but doing something even more destructive. It seems to be implanting an 'inner paedophile' in the minds of the adult population on a mass scale, a process which in itself is liable to intensify the desire to project and accuse.

And those leading the lynch mobs/’Operations’ are likely to have especially powerful inner paedophiles (or extremely powerful sadistic drives that exert insistent pressure to be vented on a socially-sanctioned hate figure). So much for enlightened progress.

I appreciate that police have an obligation to investigate allegations of serious wrongdoing. But do they not also have an obligation to professionally step back, weigh up the credibility of the accusations and abandon investigations when preliminary work fails to yield any corroboratory evidence?

Incidentally, on viewing that video link of Chief Constable Veale supplied by Bandini, and listening with a psychoanalytic ear, I noticed that he flubbed his words on several occasions, mispronouncing them even though he was reading from a (presumably well-rehearsed) script. From a psychoanalytic point of view, bungled speech acts aren’t to be dismissed as mere accidental glitches. It’s as if two parts of the mind are trying to use the same mouth at the same moment to say different things.

Slips of the tongue are, for psychoanalysts, symptomatic, often occurring when a competing thought or desire to the one we officially intend inserts itself into our speech (the unconscious is fiendishly opportunistic). Mr Veale appeared to snaffle his words when he was claiming that he and his massively costly investigation were above reproach. I wonder what the competing thought might have been?

pete wrote:

Mr Veale appeared to snaffle his words when he was claiming that he and his massively costly investigation were above reproach. I wonder what the competing thought might have been?

Above the law?

pete, this is a rather forward question and of course no need to answer if you don't want to, but you seem to know a lot about psychoanalysis and I was wondering where your knowledge came from: studying or reading about it, practising it or undergoing it?