butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Hancock speaks. Or his mate does. What he says is a re-hash of what he/they said in December. His tactic is clear - hide/avoid. Too late.
Why the lib-dems are shit
- Thread starter butchersapron
- Start date
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Thought it wouldn't be long. C4/ newman should now be on the case.
i tweeted her earlier about this story, as have others by the looks of it.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Excellent, well done.
Nigel Pascoe QC now saying he is glad the partial report has been made public
https://twitter.com/BBCPeterH/status/426025915983077376/photo/1
https://twitter.com/BBCPeterH/status/426025915983077376/photo/1
Cathy Newmans article on Rennard has been unfirewalled for 24 hours btw
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/...e?shareToken=ce1bc6c25dc2a5346e60df1b9bc3bf42
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/...e?shareToken=ce1bc6c25dc2a5346e60df1b9bc3bf42
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Pascoe said in the leaked report that he both recommended and assented to full publication. The lib-dems decided, nah, let's cover it up.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Now suspended. From what though? The lib-dem whip in portsmouth? The party?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
That times link is well worth the long read - ta again.
interesting isn't it, good to see it laid out like that and how long its taken them to get this story stood up with the lawyers.
proper journalism.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
As they'll firewall it soon, best to have a record of it here:
The presenter of Channel 4 News tells the story behind the allegations that have left the Liberal Democrats in turmoil
Just over a year ago, I sat in an old Oxford pub, the Royal Oak, with Alison Smith. I’d never met her before and we were both nervous — she because she was about to reveal intimate allegations against the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Rennard; I because I was due back in London within hours to present Channel 4 News, and it was starting to snow heavily.
It was unfortunate that the prospect of bad weather and cancelled trains weighed on my mind. Because above all else I didn’t want to rush her story. She’d e-mailed me not long previously asking to meet and I knew it had taken considerable courage to talk to me about the claims that have now engulfed the junior party in the coalition.
I needn’t have worried. She gave her account calmly and concisely and I got on the train back to London knowing that I had the germs of a politically explosive story.
The tale really begins four years ago. I was contacted by someone who wasn’t herself claiming to have suffered at Lord Rennard’s hands, but said she knew of many others who had. I made strenuous efforts to get in touch with various women at the time, including Alison Smith herself, but none wanted to appear on camera, fearing the peer’s immense power, how the public and press would react and what the repercussions would be for family — and of course their political family, the Liberal Democrats.
I was advised by the Channel 4 News lawyer that anonymous allegations simply wouldn’t stand up in court. And that was that. Another story bites the dust.
Then, a year ago, Smith e-mailed me out of the blue, suggesting the culture had changed and that there was a growing intolerance of sexual harassment in Westminster and elsewhere. As a politics lecturer, she wanted to make life easier for the next generation of women, helping to transform the political culture for good by rooting out casual sexism in the Lib Dems and beyond.
And so I met Smith with my producer, Nicole Kleeman of Firecrest Films, in the Royal Oak and she agreed in principle to sit down with me and do an interview on camera.
The very same day I got in touch with Alison Goldsworthy, a Lib Dem activist who’s now vice-chairman of the party’s federal executive. She was incredibly worried about participating in my research, knowing Lord Rennard’s godlike status. He was the man who’d won elections for the Lib Dems and pulled the strings of a succession of leaders. As an active party worker, Goldsworthy worried that if she spoke out she could be turned into a political pariah.
Reluctantly, she said she’d do an interview so long as we concealed her identity. It was only during the furore that followed that she publicly declared herself as one of the women behind the original allegations.
We returned to Oxford a week later and filmed Smith in the Old Bank hotel. She was extremely nervous because she’d never done any TV before. Shortly afterwards I met Goldsworthy again and filmed her, or at least mainly the back of her head. Even though we repeatedly assured her that her words would be voiced by an actor she was understandably embarrassed to be talking so intimately to an almost perfect stranger.
Despite those two women risking personal and professional humiliation, it wasn’t enough to get the story on air. We needed much more. While I carried on with the day-to-day business of presenting Channel 4 News and stories came and went, Kleeman started travelling the length and breadth of the country, talking to as many Lib Dem women as possible. It was painstaking work with many blind alleys and fruitless inquiries.
The turning point came, prosaically enough, in a Costa Coffee in Bedford. Kleeman had gone to meet Bridget Harris, who’d been a special adviser to Nick Clegg until recently. After talking round the houses about women in politics for nigh on 40 minutes, Kleeman raised the subject of Lord Rennard. Harris was quite clear about what she says happened to her, but she was astonished when she was told we’d heard similar stories from other women.
She promised she’d think about talking publicly, but was by no means sure she would. What she did disclose however was a document — the first independent proof of the women’s claims that they’d told senior figures in the party about what they say happened and that decisive action wasn’t taken. We were inching towards securing the evidence we needed.
Susan Gaszczak, another activist, gave us a statement revealing her allegations against Lord Rennard. She was too apprehensive to put anything on e-mail — so she sent a typed sheet of paper anonymously to Kleeman’s office in Glasgow. Other women talked to us anonymously, so finally we had allegations from a number of women. We spent the next three weeks going back to each of the women, checking their stories and testing their credibility because we knew the level of scrutiny they, and we, would be under once the investigation was broadcast.
We still weren’t sure if we’d get it on air until Harris decided that she, like Smith, was prepared to speak publicly. She was frustrated that she felt she had to: she’d left Nick Clegg’s office and was embarking on a new life as an entrepreneur. This was an episode from her past that she really didn’t want to revisit. In the end, however, having complained to her line manager more than a decade ago, she decided she wanted the party to deal with her allegations once and for all. Above all, she was quite determined that subsequent generations of women should get a better deal from politics.
By February 18 we were ready to go. We gave Nick Clegg, the party and Lord Rennard several days to respond. Lord Rennard himself denied the allegations and continues to do so, saying he had “no recollection of any inappropriate behaviour” and that he was “unaware of any complaint” about his conduct.On February 21, we put the finishing touches to the story.
At 6.59pm that day, a minute before we went on air, a statement came through from the Lib Dem HQ. It set in motion the train of events that have now split the party and left it facing the prospect of legal action from the man who helped propel it into government. It said an internal investigation into the allegations had begun under the party’s disciplinary procedures.
Even so, there wasn’t a huge amount of coverage in the next day’s papers and it was only at the weekend that the momentum started to build. A bungled response by the Lib Dems was what kept it on the front pages day after day. Nick Clegg at first claimed he only knew of the allegations when alerted by Channel 4 News before having to admit that his office was aware of “indirect and non-specific” concerns from as long ago as 2008. He and other senior figures had missed the opportunity time and again to deal with the allegations, leaving the women feeling they had no choice but to have it played out in the media.
The police investigation came and went without any charges being brought. It was only when the Lib Dems resumed their own internal inquiry that events began to spiral out of the leader’s control. To justify kicking Lord Rennard out of the party, Lib Dem rules stipulated that the allegations had to be proved beyond reasonable doubt. With these kinds of claims, there’s rarely an independent witness to what really happened, so it was always going to be a challenge for those making the allegations to satisfy that level of proof. So when the inquiry, carried out by Alistair Webster, QC, concluded that there wasn’t enough evidence to dismiss Lord Rennard from the party, but that he should instead apologise to the women for the “distress” he’d caused them, neither side was ever going to be happy.
I spoke to all the women who’d formed the basis of my original report. They were angry at what they saw as their party’s ineptitude, frustrated that they’d risked everything and achieved nothing, and upset that their evidence — “broadly credible”, Webster concluded — was being called into doubt, particularly by parliamentary colleagues.
When Baroness Williams dismissed the allegations last year as “hopelessly exaggerated”, it hurt. When the Lib Dem MEP Chris Davies said that “touching someone’s leg through clothing” was akin to an Italian man pinching women’s bottoms, it not only betrayed a thoroughly old-fashioned sexism, but also a lack of awareness of the claims the women originally made.
One of the women alleged that, during a photo opportunity at a party event, Lord Rennard “shoved his hand down the back of my dress”, while Alison Smith claimed he’d sat between her and a female friend, “moving his hands down our backs and places where they had absolutely no business being”.
Over the past year all the women have been under considerable pressure from some within the party but also from the media. One told me she’s twice had to leave her home, and once the country, to try to put some distance between herself and the story. Smith told me yesterday she never thought it would be easy, “but I’ve been shocked by how difficult it’s been to get a proper investigation”. Despite all of this though, what’s impressed me most is that all the women say they have no regrets about speaking out. Harris texted me to say: “It’s a relief to be able to talk about these issues”.
The presenter of Channel 4 News tells the story behind the allegations that have left the Liberal Democrats in turmoil
Just over a year ago, I sat in an old Oxford pub, the Royal Oak, with Alison Smith. I’d never met her before and we were both nervous — she because she was about to reveal intimate allegations against the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Rennard; I because I was due back in London within hours to present Channel 4 News, and it was starting to snow heavily.
It was unfortunate that the prospect of bad weather and cancelled trains weighed on my mind. Because above all else I didn’t want to rush her story. She’d e-mailed me not long previously asking to meet and I knew it had taken considerable courage to talk to me about the claims that have now engulfed the junior party in the coalition.
I needn’t have worried. She gave her account calmly and concisely and I got on the train back to London knowing that I had the germs of a politically explosive story.
The tale really begins four years ago. I was contacted by someone who wasn’t herself claiming to have suffered at Lord Rennard’s hands, but said she knew of many others who had. I made strenuous efforts to get in touch with various women at the time, including Alison Smith herself, but none wanted to appear on camera, fearing the peer’s immense power, how the public and press would react and what the repercussions would be for family — and of course their political family, the Liberal Democrats.
I was advised by the Channel 4 News lawyer that anonymous allegations simply wouldn’t stand up in court. And that was that. Another story bites the dust.
Then, a year ago, Smith e-mailed me out of the blue, suggesting the culture had changed and that there was a growing intolerance of sexual harassment in Westminster and elsewhere. As a politics lecturer, she wanted to make life easier for the next generation of women, helping to transform the political culture for good by rooting out casual sexism in the Lib Dems and beyond.
And so I met Smith with my producer, Nicole Kleeman of Firecrest Films, in the Royal Oak and she agreed in principle to sit down with me and do an interview on camera.
The very same day I got in touch with Alison Goldsworthy, a Lib Dem activist who’s now vice-chairman of the party’s federal executive. She was incredibly worried about participating in my research, knowing Lord Rennard’s godlike status. He was the man who’d won elections for the Lib Dems and pulled the strings of a succession of leaders. As an active party worker, Goldsworthy worried that if she spoke out she could be turned into a political pariah.
Reluctantly, she said she’d do an interview so long as we concealed her identity. It was only during the furore that followed that she publicly declared herself as one of the women behind the original allegations.
We returned to Oxford a week later and filmed Smith in the Old Bank hotel. She was extremely nervous because she’d never done any TV before. Shortly afterwards I met Goldsworthy again and filmed her, or at least mainly the back of her head. Even though we repeatedly assured her that her words would be voiced by an actor she was understandably embarrassed to be talking so intimately to an almost perfect stranger.
Despite those two women risking personal and professional humiliation, it wasn’t enough to get the story on air. We needed much more. While I carried on with the day-to-day business of presenting Channel 4 News and stories came and went, Kleeman started travelling the length and breadth of the country, talking to as many Lib Dem women as possible. It was painstaking work with many blind alleys and fruitless inquiries.
The turning point came, prosaically enough, in a Costa Coffee in Bedford. Kleeman had gone to meet Bridget Harris, who’d been a special adviser to Nick Clegg until recently. After talking round the houses about women in politics for nigh on 40 minutes, Kleeman raised the subject of Lord Rennard. Harris was quite clear about what she says happened to her, but she was astonished when she was told we’d heard similar stories from other women.
She promised she’d think about talking publicly, but was by no means sure she would. What she did disclose however was a document — the first independent proof of the women’s claims that they’d told senior figures in the party about what they say happened and that decisive action wasn’t taken. We were inching towards securing the evidence we needed.
Susan Gaszczak, another activist, gave us a statement revealing her allegations against Lord Rennard. She was too apprehensive to put anything on e-mail — so she sent a typed sheet of paper anonymously to Kleeman’s office in Glasgow. Other women talked to us anonymously, so finally we had allegations from a number of women. We spent the next three weeks going back to each of the women, checking their stories and testing their credibility because we knew the level of scrutiny they, and we, would be under once the investigation was broadcast.
We still weren’t sure if we’d get it on air until Harris decided that she, like Smith, was prepared to speak publicly. She was frustrated that she felt she had to: she’d left Nick Clegg’s office and was embarking on a new life as an entrepreneur. This was an episode from her past that she really didn’t want to revisit. In the end, however, having complained to her line manager more than a decade ago, she decided she wanted the party to deal with her allegations once and for all. Above all, she was quite determined that subsequent generations of women should get a better deal from politics.
By February 18 we were ready to go. We gave Nick Clegg, the party and Lord Rennard several days to respond. Lord Rennard himself denied the allegations and continues to do so, saying he had “no recollection of any inappropriate behaviour” and that he was “unaware of any complaint” about his conduct.On February 21, we put the finishing touches to the story.
At 6.59pm that day, a minute before we went on air, a statement came through from the Lib Dem HQ. It set in motion the train of events that have now split the party and left it facing the prospect of legal action from the man who helped propel it into government. It said an internal investigation into the allegations had begun under the party’s disciplinary procedures.
Even so, there wasn’t a huge amount of coverage in the next day’s papers and it was only at the weekend that the momentum started to build. A bungled response by the Lib Dems was what kept it on the front pages day after day. Nick Clegg at first claimed he only knew of the allegations when alerted by Channel 4 News before having to admit that his office was aware of “indirect and non-specific” concerns from as long ago as 2008. He and other senior figures had missed the opportunity time and again to deal with the allegations, leaving the women feeling they had no choice but to have it played out in the media.
The police investigation came and went without any charges being brought. It was only when the Lib Dems resumed their own internal inquiry that events began to spiral out of the leader’s control. To justify kicking Lord Rennard out of the party, Lib Dem rules stipulated that the allegations had to be proved beyond reasonable doubt. With these kinds of claims, there’s rarely an independent witness to what really happened, so it was always going to be a challenge for those making the allegations to satisfy that level of proof. So when the inquiry, carried out by Alistair Webster, QC, concluded that there wasn’t enough evidence to dismiss Lord Rennard from the party, but that he should instead apologise to the women for the “distress” he’d caused them, neither side was ever going to be happy.
I spoke to all the women who’d formed the basis of my original report. They were angry at what they saw as their party’s ineptitude, frustrated that they’d risked everything and achieved nothing, and upset that their evidence — “broadly credible”, Webster concluded — was being called into doubt, particularly by parliamentary colleagues.
When Baroness Williams dismissed the allegations last year as “hopelessly exaggerated”, it hurt. When the Lib Dem MEP Chris Davies said that “touching someone’s leg through clothing” was akin to an Italian man pinching women’s bottoms, it not only betrayed a thoroughly old-fashioned sexism, but also a lack of awareness of the claims the women originally made.
One of the women alleged that, during a photo opportunity at a party event, Lord Rennard “shoved his hand down the back of my dress”, while Alison Smith claimed he’d sat between her and a female friend, “moving his hands down our backs and places where they had absolutely no business being”.
Over the past year all the women have been under considerable pressure from some within the party but also from the media. One told me she’s twice had to leave her home, and once the country, to try to put some distance between herself and the story. Smith told me yesterday she never thought it would be easy, “but I’ve been shocked by how difficult it’s been to get a proper investigation”. Despite all of this though, what’s impressed me most is that all the women say they have no regrets about speaking out. Harris texted me to say: “It’s a relief to be able to talk about these issues”.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
Susan Gaszczak resolutely didn’t want her name to appear in our original investigation, because she said she was terrified about the impact the ensuing scandal would have on her teenage children. Last week, she came into the Channel 4 News studio and waived her anonymity to give her reaction to Lord Rennard’s return to the Lib Dem fold. She was so nervous I could see her trembling slightly. But she spoke resolutely and powerfully — determined to change the Lib Dems, and political culture, for good.
She e-mailed me yesterday, saying her children’s reaction had given her strength. “They are now proud that I have done this and this has empowered me, and I hope this gives other people the courage to speak up for what they know is right,” she said.
Nearly a year after we broadcast her allegations, we’re still waiting for Nick Clegg to appear on our programme about the Rennard affair, to tell us what he knows is right.
She e-mailed me yesterday, saying her children’s reaction had given her strength. “They are now proud that I have done this and this has empowered me, and I hope this gives other people the courage to speak up for what they know is right,” she said.
Nearly a year after we broadcast her allegations, we’re still waiting for Nick Clegg to appear on our programme about the Rennard affair, to tell us what he knows is right.
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
taffboy gwyrdd
Embrace the confusion!
Looking at the mess the LDs have made of sorting out this Lord Sex-pest stuff made me wonder:
What sort of calamity would befall us if, led by some sponging dweeb like Danny Alexander, they negotiated coalition terms with a party of finance cult fanatics who'd been in power more than any other in history, including a squillion political stich-ups large or small, and the building of an empire often through mass murder and divide and rule?
Doesn't bare thinking about does it boyz n girls!
What sort of calamity would befall us if, led by some sponging dweeb like Danny Alexander, they negotiated coalition terms with a party of finance cult fanatics who'd been in power more than any other in history, including a squillion political stich-ups large or small, and the building of an empire often through mass murder and divide and rule?
Doesn't bare thinking about does it boyz n girls!
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Eh? And dweeb? And the Savile allusion - why?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Yep.membership now. Which open the question of thay they a) failed to act for so long despite it being on Clegg's personal desk and b) how they acted so 'swiftly' now. but not in Rennard's case. Joke people, joke party.Handycock suspended from party.
Let's hope he sues as well!
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Lib-dems promised a right of recall for these people in his cast in stone coalition agreement. Where is it?
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
Oh yes, all of that...and we can only hope that his victim gets justice in court.....but.....but....politically....here, again we see those sticklers for justice and probity using rate-payers money to go to court, to in an attempt to prevent a report into Handycock's behaviour, (that they have comissioned using public money), being used as evidence in another court in the civil action being taken against Handycock by his victim.
FFS, how piss-poor do these fuckers have to be.
http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/po...-report-into-mike-hancock-s-conduct-1-5808780
e2a : good account of the LD dominated council in action here.
J Ed
Follow Back Pro Expropriation
taffboy gwyrdd
Embrace the confusion!
Crikey, I only just saw the Savile thing. That was NOT intentional. soz. But he is a fucking dweeb.
taffboy gwyrdd
Embrace the confusion!
From memory, it might have been supposed to be on the back of the voting reform calamity. They played a total blinder there.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Of course, there's a long running pryce cable connection, their careers seem intertwined. I need to double check on this before say more.
Back to Hancock - this is from pompey lib-dems:
So another internal fron has been opened - this constituency against the leadership. Clowns.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
It was in the coalition agreement signed the week after the general election - writ in stone.
taffboy gwyrdd
Embrace the confusion!
I agree, but I still think it went out the window with the AV thingy. Not that it should have, but they turned out to be shockingly shit negotiations, as anyone who knew the "character" of DA could have predicted. Never mind knife to a gunfight, this was more of a pea-shooter.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Lib-dems official response to victims letter to Clegg two years ago - making clear that they utterly lied in their statement yesterday that this was the first they had heard of the allegations - that's what the first line intended to suggest. They will argue that they hadn't seen this report so were unaware of the serious nature of the allegations - well,. they were, and the reason they then chose not to do the sort of report that pascoe did, they decided to fob the victim off rather than take her allegations seriously, so they're doubly damned.
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