Panorama's report on the Westminster paedophile cases

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After the Corbyn hit job by Panorama before his election triumph, a Panorama raising doubts over witnesses in the Westminster paedophile cases. Do I detect a pattern here?
Here's a conversation I had with some friends on Facebook about the programme.
Iain McGill Yes think you're spot on, Joe. It's as if Murdoch is already running the BBC.....they're pulling punches and spinning stories all over the place. Well and truly neutered Like · Reply · 11 hrs

Joe Gill God forbid that the BBC would ever actually do a proper investigation of the allegations in the Westminster scandal - and discover that they are not entirely bogus. Perhaps they've already done it and I missed it. Like · Reply · 9 hrs

Ollie Goodall Steve Hewlett on the Media Show just now: "Panorama is not the BBC." Can we stop these sweeping abstract arguments please? Panorama, like much of TV is made by independent production houses. And are shown often, for commercial reasons. I don't necessarily agree with some of it's output but I'll defend the BBC, if not the public broadcasting model, to the hilt. ON the BBC not OF the BBC. Like · Reply · 7 hrs · Edited

Ann Czernik At the risk of being shot down, I thought the Panorama programme was right to ask the questions that they did. The programme did'nt suggest and in fact was careful to state that these people had been abused. The question was how journalists had obtained statements, and the interview with Mark from the Grafton Close children's home was really well handled. I've interviewed widely around the Westminster story. I've never been able to stand it up and believe me I've tried. What I found was exactly the same as Panorama. I know of one victim who was plastered all over SKY as abused in Dolphin Square and he is absolutely categoric that it did'nt happen. He like many other boys from the care system was part of a network where staff arranged for boys to be sold for sex. But not at Dolphin Square. Another boy told me of his involvement in a similar ring but he was billed as a victim of Edward Heath.

The abuse these boys suffered is real, and painful but the way that their experience has been manipulated and abused within the media is really wrong. It's not helped focus attention on the biggest child sex ring in history within the North Wales children's homes, nor has it had any impact on raising support for victims who struggle on a daily basis to come to terms with their abuse. Children were abused by MP's. There are over 650 of them so statistically some will be paedophiles, Does that constitute a conspiracy, no it does'nt. Was there a cover up - ask MI5 and the security agencies.

But what is truly tragic about this is that the many, many victims who were abused by lesser mortals are excluded from the investigation. Media is only interested in child abuse as either abuse porn or if there is a celebrity involved. There is no real interest in child abuse or child sex exploitation unless the victims are pupils at privileged institutions or the perpetrators are amongst the rich and powerful. That is hypocrisy and meanwhile a sociological disaster is unfolding because as an industry CSE has taken root in communities. I'm backing the Panorama programme because it asked difficult questions that needed to be asked. We need a justice system which operates fairly. Unfortunately that means that victims of abuse, are witnesses to their own assault, often the only witnesses. What if those accounts do not stand up to the rigours of the justice system? Is it OK to relax those requirements to obtain convictions and what do we do about potential miscarriages of justice. Child abuse is complex, and difficult and challenges black and white thinking. Of course we should believe survivors, but we also need to uphold the justice system. It's the only thing that stands between us and the abuse of human rights that would occur if we compromise that system. It's not perfect but it's the best that there is.

In the UK, we are all innocent until proven guilty. Child abuse - as a crime - has to have the same standards. It doesnt mean that someone was not abused but it does mean that trial by media has to stop. Everyone is entitled to a fair trial and the current coverage means that people like Proctor are unlikely to get that. The problem with that is that they can quite rightly claim that as a defence. I was at a conference on CSE recently where there were discussions about the problems of conviction. There are people out there quietly doing really good work to try to grapple withh the problems of evidence, and interrogation and vulnerable witnesses but no-one wants to talk about that. It's easier to characterise this monstrous crime as the actions of people who are beyond human but the reality is that children are abused mainly by people that they know, and you sit down to dinner with. Panorama - I feel - simply engaged with some of the issues that surround the allegations of the Westminster paedophile ring and there are many. I think they should be allowed as journalists to do that. Unlike · Reply · 1 · 6 hrs

Joe Gill Thank you Ann for sharing that - I have not seen the show so I bow to what you are saying - and perhaps I posted too hastily without seeing the programme. I agree that people should not be put on trial by media. And I did wonder how it was that none of these cases came to trial after years of witnesses being interviewed. In which case does that mean Exaro is not being fair in its coverage of the story? Like · Reply · 6 hrs

Joe Gill Exaro put up a good defence of their reports on Newsnight tonight, Watching Panorama now Like · Reply · 52 mins

Joe Gill The tone of the programme is disbelieving of the witnesses, suggesting the accounts of abuse are mostly made up. It casts doubt over Exaro investigation methods and makes a big attack on Tom Watson's parliamentary calls for action on paedophilia, while also making Leon Brittan out as an innocent victim of a witchhunt. The questions maybe valid, but its a massively pro-establishment programme. Unsurprising really - but what about all the other centres of paedophilia, aside from Dolphin Square and Elm Guest House? Perhaps we can now have a programme about the well-known coverups of the 70s to 1990s of senior paedophiles. I think we'll be waiting a while for that one, or perhaps they never happened either... Like · Reply · 2 mins

The QT election debate - Poor Ed's final trip

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Poor Ed Miliband, being harangued and bullied by some pretty unpleasant members of a 'representative' audience. He stood there, slightly rabbit in headlights, before launching into his creepy crawly 'what's your name' I'm-a-man-of-the-people routine.
Come on, Ed. This American style coaching - looking mad-eyed into the TV camera, walking up close to the audience like a preacher in the Deep South, rather than a British politician in dire need of some likability.
I felt sorry for him. I don't like bullying. Minutes before a confident, smooth-talking David Cameron was able to hammer home the Tory message of cutting the deficit and making sure all you hard-faced hard-working voters don't let those horrible scroungers get any more of your hard-earned cash. They lapped it up.

Miliband didn't do himself any favours. When it came to coalition talk, he just claimed that he would not negotiate on his manifesto and never do a deal with the SNP. The audience weren't buying it. One guy said, "have you thought how much more respect you would get from this audience if you were honest about what deals you will make after the election?' Miliband just carried on lying regardless.

It was as if he was saying to Scottish voters, I dare you to vote SNP. Go on. To English voters, he desperately wanted them to believe he was as much an English nationalist as any of them. The art of politics seems to come down to who can lie with a straight face. The more Miliband-Balls say they won't truck with the nationalists, the more it feels like the loser in Monopoly kicking over the table. If you're going to take all the money (votes), I won't give you the pleasure of winning. They seem to think that the SNP will simply be forced to back a Labour government - a minority, weak government, on current polling - from the sidelines. They could, as others have said, just abstain and watch Labour crumble.
But as one audience member in QT said, what about the voters? If voters don't want to give either party a majority, that means you should listen to them. They don't want a single party dictatorship. Listen to them. They've had tweedledum tweedledee for decades. They want something new. Just holding your hands over your ears and going 'la la la la la' is not going to change that.
At the end of Miliband's 28 minutes, we were none the wiser. He made a few noises about standing up for working people against non-doms and big corporations, but it rang a bit hollow. You can't just declare class war if there is no one standing behind you (although at least he does now have his new mate Russell Brand backing him), nothing in your armoury.
The small businesswoman didn't look that impressed. He should have just been a lot tougher on these critics - voters can be wrong, and they can just be deep down, rightwing Tories and there is little point in trying to win them over - just demolish them so your supporters can see that you know how to fight. But Miliband doesn't have the killer instinct. He doesn't even seem to have all the arguments.
He should remind people that zero hours contracts, low wages and sky-high rents are all subsidised by taxpayers to the tune of tens of billions of pounds. That's ordinary people's money being funnelled to business and landlords because they are exploiting people with low wages and high rents.
After getting a couple of laughs - more than Cameron - at the end Miliband tripped as he left the stage. What a symbolic exit. I felt sorry for him but more than anything I felt like the election was already over. I'm going to hold out for some small victories - the decapitation of Nick Clegg, a thumping majority for Caroline Lucas. But when I looked at that "representative audience" it felt like they wanted something right-wing, hard, Tory-like. And as they say, the people get the government they deserve. And the Scots will just have to wait for the next referendum to leave us to it.

China bashing and the myth of democracy

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Listening to Damian Gramaticus, the BBC's man in Beijing, describing the Chinese system as authoritarian, secretive and corrupt on Radio Four this morning, I once again felt the power of our media to tell us what to think about the world.
The propaganda message is unrelenting. In the run-up to the People's Congress in China, which will anoint the new party leaders, we are being constantly reminded how flawed and undemocratic their system is. It is as if they need to keep telling us that the Chinese desperately want our democracy and are being cruelly denied it by the Communist party. So Cold War, it's like the 1980s all over again.
Are BBC journalists telling the truth? I don't think so, not when they so assiduously paint a picture of a 'regime' denying its people's aspirations. For when it comes to aspirations, I find it hard for any Western government to claim that it is democratic in the sense as representing the people's will. In Europe, Britain and North America, we have a system that constantly enriches the 1% richest, while imposing austerity on the majority.
This is done in the wake of a financial crisis caused by the deregulation of the banking system over many years, carried out on 'our' behalf, but which the 'people' never asked for.
An economic system built on debt was hoisted on western electorates without it ever being put to the electorate. Of course, we can easily see the faults of China's model of 'democratic people's dictatorship' in which a pyramid of bodies each chooses their leaders, giving the people little or no say in who rules them.
But democracy is not, as our media would have us believe, simply a matter of having a choice of personalities at an election every four years. Americans just 'chose' Barack Obama over Mitt Romney, but this was the 'choice' between two candidates backed by the millions of dollars donated by corporations, and from two parties that each uphold a system of debt-based capitalism that has seen the gains of growth go into the hands of the 0.1% for the last three decades.
So the question isn't as facile as how you choose your president or parliament. It is how accountable are these representatives. If they are hardly accountable at all, then how real is the democracy we have? Yes, to some extent we have 'freedom of speech' - mostly thanks to the internet - but media is controlled by billionaires, whose message is overwhelmingly in favour of the system as it is. We do not have a free flow of ideas accessible to the majority about what kind of system they would like to live in. Education is increasingly a matter of privilege and birth - money buys access to the best schools for the wealthy.
I would wager that for most countries, the higher the liabilities of the banking system, and the more 'open' it is to the free flow of capital in and out of the country, the more likely that conditions for the masses will stagnate, the more inequality will intensify, the more indebted the state will become, and the more eviscerated and elite-manipulated will become the system of democracy.
If you live in a country where capital movement is restricted, and banks' liabilities cannot exceed a certain amount, that is a country whose wealth is based on real economic activity, where the state has a reasonable degree of control over the flow of finance and over the ownership of assets within the country's borders, it is more likely that state policy will have a beneficial impact on the majority of the population.
China has adopted many elements of capitalism, including fee payment for public services such as education and healthcare, private housing developments and massive wealth inequality. Billionaires are now integral to the Communist elite, which means that potentially they can exert a stranglehold over policy, as the party moves further away from socialism and marxism. But for more than three decades reform and growth did raise millions out of poverty in a way not witnessed in that splendid democracy, India.
However, the clamour from the west is now for 'reform' in China - and when they say reform they mean a combination of mass privatisation of state assets and the introduction of the western system of representative democracy. The thing about the latter, it is not government of the people for the people, but it is mostly government of the rich for the rich. Look how it worked out in Russia to get an idea of what China could have in future - how different it would be from now is questionable. The people simply get to choose which representatives of the owning class they prefer. This is what the BBC - as the state broadcaster under a monarchichal democratic oligarchy - will never tell you.
Further, the social contract under a dictatorship may well be more honest than under a democracy, since the deal is 'we will let you continue to rule if you provide benefits for the people, but if you simply enrich your elite families and leave us in poverty we will rise up and attempt to overthrow you'.
This is what happened in Syria - the ruling family forgot the deal and the people rose up. This is why in dictatorships there has to be a deal, because the stakes are very high, whereas in democracies, the deal breaks down because the leaders leave office every four years and thus avoid accountability - and take cushy directorships in industry. While in office, they are under no obligation to do what they said during the elections since 'representative' does not mean delegate, and most members of parliament are placemen under the thumb of party whips and hacks. Rather like in China.