In the now famous taped conversation between him and Darius Guppy, just months before the latter would be busted in a £1.8 million insurance scam, Boris conspired to have a News of the Worldjournalist, Stuart Collier, beaten up on behalf of his old School chum. In the tape Boris says he’ll obtain Collier’s phone number and then get an address. As the UK has never published reverse directories how would Boris achieve this?

Well blagging of course. It had to be via the police or a British Telecom staffer. Most likely would be a copper, as it was standard practice on Fleet Street back then to take advantage of the fact that the Police National Computer did not record such inquiries unless an individual was flagged as a person of interest. BT on the other hand much tighter internal controls. Boris displayed both the knowledge and intent to blag, though there is no evidence that he actually supplied the requested information, despite saying he would.

I was responsible for that tape recording: I hired an ex-BT employee to tap Guppy’s phone. Incidentally, while the conflict between myself and Guppy was a dirty fight, I’m sorry Johnson has got caught up in it. Anyway, Guido is wrong. Johnson had worked for News International and told Guppy he would approach an ex-colleague who had Collier’s address. Clive Goodman made enquiries, he told me, and discovered Johnson made no such approach despite assuring Guppy he would. I think Johnson was stiffing Guppy deliberately and had no intention of helping, but that’s just my opinion.

In any event, Guido’s wrong about this.

The News of the World yesterday became the subject of a second police inquiry after Scotland Yard announced that it was to investigate whether the newspaper made illegal payments to serving police officers.

[...]

None of the officers is said to be senior. All are below the rank of commander…

This sort of corruption wasn’t limited to the News of the World. I saw it at first hand in the early 1990s when I was a witness in the Darius Guppy case; for all Guppy’s whining and lying, he actually had cause for his complaints about police conduct. A private letter from the future Earl Spencer to him, which had been found during a search of his flat, was passed by the police to the press and it was subsequently printed.

Only a minority of police officers had relationships with journalists. This wasn’t for any noble reasons. Only detectives were likely to have access to enough newsworthy stories, so uniformed officers were rarely press sources. The various squads dedicated to serious crime were the most likely to be connected with journalists but it would have been a shambles if everyone on a squad had their own contacts, so someone around the rank of Inspector would have maintained the contact and shared out the proceeds with the rest of the squad.

I was introduced, as a prosecution witness, to the journalist contact of the police team who were investigating Guppy. This was before the trial. The introduction was made, in person, by one of the more senior team members. I have no doubt he was paid for making it.

The journalist did not work for News International, but one of the other tabloids. He now writes for that most worthy of newspapers, The Independent, and is a prominent anti-war voice there.

News International do need to be investigated for this. But so does every other newspaper publisher.

There are a fair number of pious broadsheet journalists who’ve done this sort of thing, routinely, in the past as they climbed up the ladder. Full disclosure would be interesting.

Very many public figures and politicians are subjected to campaigns that step well beyond the realms of reasonable discourse but occasionally the campaigns are right. It would be dangerous to allow the powerful to silence this sort of criticism, so unfortunately the less powerful have to have the same lack of protection. After all, politicians should be subject to the same laws as the rest of us, and vice versa.

It’s easy to say this when you haven’t been the target of this sort of campaign. One of the good things about being the subject, myself, of an online campaign by Darius Guppy is that he gives me the opportunity to walk the walk when it comes to the subject of free expression.

Two armed men have been arrested in Devon over a suspected “murder plot” involving Joss Stone, the international singing star and close friend of the Duke of Cambridge, police said.

It doesn’t seem to have been planned by Professor Moriarty:

… the pair had travelled 250 miles from the Manchester area before they were arrested in Devon…

“Officers attended the area at around 10am and subsequently arrested the occupants of a red Fiat Punto.”

“A 30 year old man was arrested for driving whilst disqualified…”

They had weapons and a body bag, so it’s a good thing they were arrested.

But a routine license check would have had them arrested and searched when the disqualification came up; that’s not the hallmark of a well-planned scheme. It sounds like two very petty Manc neds got overambitious.

Ms. Guigou, a Socialist like Mr. Strauss-Kahn and a member of Parliament, told France Info radio that the American system “is an accusatory system,” while in France, “we have a system that takes perhaps a little more time but which is, despite everything, more protective of individual rights.”

Max Gallo, a prominent historian and commentator, agreed that the two systems are different. “It’s the first time in the history of France that a top-level figure is treated like a common criminal whose guilt is already established,” he said. “But it also manifests an egalitarianism in the American justice system that surprises us in France.”

More protective of rights, perhaps, but also more protective of functionnaires. I once met a man – details here will be shaded, for obvious reasons – who was convicted as part of a corruption case involving a number of regional politicians. He turned up in court to receive what would inevitably be a custodial sentence, bag packed ready to be taken to prison, and was told he was sentenced to five years… starting in ten days’ time.

Ten days later, he was the only one of the convicted who went to jail. The others had fled, ironically given the S K case, to Florida. He was the only one without the means to live indefinitely abroad.

There is no information, at this stage, to suggest that this represents a new level of threat to our community.

From the CST blog. Context:

Court hearings began yesterday, 27 December, of nine men arrested in counter-terror raids in Cardiff, London, Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent on 20 December.

The court heard that two synagogues and their Rabbis were amongst a wider range of potential targets of the accused.

Being actively targeted by terrorists is just business as usual for British Jews today.

If you look, there are certainly lots of, mainly vocational, courses that do CRB check their students. I expect that, at the risk of generalising, people who had a delinquent period in their teens would tend to be well represented on vocational courses.

In what way, exactly, does a teenage shoplifting incident make you unsuitable to work with children as an adult?

Oh, and what the fuck do they expect these people to do now they can’t train for a proper career? Apart, that is, from more shoplifting.

Hirst campaigned, and won, so it’s not surprising he celebrated. Lighting a spliff on video while on licence might have been a mistake, but he is presumeably calculating that nobody can prove there was cannabis in it. Bravado, I expect he’s planning to call it.

Dale is worried that prisoners’ votes could sway results in marginal Parliamentary seats. Maybe. If so, it’ll be likely that the sway will be in the direction of Dale’s Conservatives; prisoners are a reactionary bunch.

I’m glad this has happened. I’d like the franchise to be genuinely universal. Lunatics, prisoners – even members of the House of Lords – should all have the vote. This is for two reasons.

First, the principle that the only reason the state can claim any kind of jurisdiction over any individual is that they have a vote. It’s extraordinary that libertarian and liberal conservatives can miss that point.

Secondly, and more practically, we need constitutional structures for when things go wrong as much as when they go right. Totalitarian states around the world make a practice of imprisoning dissidents, or of declaring them to be mad. A universal franchise would be some small innocculation against the ability of the state to make the inconvenient invisible.