Matthew Steeples highlights how the ‘Mandelson Media Method’ is very much in play in both the case of the Prince Andrew-Jeffrey Epstein connection and the renewed interest in the Madeleine McCann disappearance
As Andrew Marr pointed out in his History of Modern Britain – screened on BBC Four last night – in his example, highlighting the case of the senseless murder of the innocent toddler Jamie Bulger by two truly evil teenagers during John Major’s premiership – Madeleine McCann’s disappearance occurred just a month before Blair left office and Gordon Brown took over. News of it dominated the media during the transition period.
Defining the Brown years – during which Peter Mandelson was a government minister from October 2008 until May 2010 – in terms of the vast acres of pages devoted to the case and garnering disproportionate attention from government thus, as Murray pointed out: “British diplomatic staff were under direct instruction to support the McCanns far beyond the usual.”
Mandelson had his finger on the pulse with the McCann story then and today the proof of its usefulness is still in the pudding by way of the fact that it wiped other ‘bad news’ stories off the front pages in the last week. Equally, as has been the case with the renewal of interest in Prince Andrew’s “has he or hasn’t he” cooperated with the investigations into Jeffrey Epstein in the last 24 hours, here are matters that show that the Mandelson style of media management haven’t moved on.
One rather conveniently unavailable person who links the ‘players’ in these matters is still apparently missing in action. Again, this morning, we again join those asking: “Why doesn’t Ghislaine Maxwell finally come forward?”
Peter Mandelson pictured trying on a belt whilst Jeffrey Epstein looks on in St Barts in 2005. They are said to have been introduced by their mutual friend Ghislaine Maxwell and there is no suggestion that Lord Mandelson knew anything of Epstein’s criminal activities.In 2009, private investigators for Gerry and Kate McCann issued an E-FIT to the media of a woman they believed could be “potentially significant” to their investigation. She has never been found, but, speculation online (entirely unproven as accurate thus far) has regularly included: “She looks remarkably like Ghislaine Maxwell.” There is no suggestion that this is one and the same woman, but it would be ever so helpful if Miss Maxwell came forward and cleared this up for once and for all.The no-longer so “grand old Duke of York” Prince Andrew poses for a picture with the “master of spin” and king of media relations Lord Mandelson.Peter Mandelson worked with PR spinner Matthew Freud, the late Sir Clement Freud’s son, on the Millennium Dome. The pair have partied together on many occasions – including at Freud’s then marital home, Burford Priory, and most famously with George Osborne, Oleg Deripaska and Nat Rothschild in Corfu.Pictured top: Paedophile Sir Clement Freud (right) lunched with Gerry (left) and Kate McCann in Praia da Luz in Portugal in July 2007, two months after their daughter’s disappearance. Mrs McCann later praised the risotto as “the best she’d ever tasted.” Pictured below: Ghislaine Maxwell pictured at the launch of a book about Sir Clement’s brother, Lucian, titled ‘Breakfast With Lucian’ in 2013 by Geordie Greig. Also in the image are Nicholas Coleridge, Piers Morgan, an unknown child, Geordie Greig and Ariadne Calvo-Platero.
In spite of a judge rejecting evidence disclosure, Jeremy Bamber’s case now looks more likely to be reviewed by the Criminal Cases Review Commission; new podcast about the case begins Sunday
“If ever there was a case where the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) should be approached to make a decision on what is said to be new evidence, it is this one. This is a massively complex case which has been investigated and re-investigated by more than one police force over some 35 years.”
“The body of material is vast. After so many years, and so much litigation, the CCRC is the body undoubtedly best placed to consider the claimant’s arguments.”
We today urge readers to watch the YouTube video that follows. It examines the sequence of events on the night of 6th to the 7th August 1985 and for those interested in learning more, we also recommend listening to The White House Farm Murders: Is Jeremy Bamber Guilty? podcast by Kaiesha Page. It begins this evening and is available here.
Twerp of Twitter, ‘Shady Steph’ – a washed-up wastrel who’ll not be giving Albert Einstein a run for his money any day soon – posted the comment: “Shoot the looters” on Monday, but deleted the remark after being quite correctly reminded she’d been arrested for stealing £1,033 ($1,300) of clothing from Neiman Marcus in May 2006. Whilst in custody this rotten ratbag was also found to be in the possession of drugs.
Reported to Twitter for “inciting violence” and called out a “worthless good for nothing tw*t,” pointless pillock Pratt did not stop there. Further examples of this dumb blonde’s recent social media ‘activity’ follows.
Poor lamb – Pratt highlighted her first world problems in May. She couldn’t find an airline willing to take her and her pooch.Shopped out – In April, this alleged-no-longer-a-junkie tried to claim she’d found a new addiction: Amazon. Anyone got a polygraph machine handy?Music’s not her forte – In March, madam shared news of someone we’ve never heard of writing a song about “the horrible coronavirus.” Her sentiments made sense to just about no one.We’re sure the Queen was touched – In January, Pratt claimed to be “in complete denial” about Prince Harry and his wife quitting royal duties. The reality car wreck most likely hankers after the dastardly duo becoming her new ‘besties.’Cleaned out – In November last year, ‘Shady Steph’ shared news that she cleans her house before her cleaner arrives. Anyone surprised? Anyone guessing she might have a lot of white stuff to hoover up?
With humanitarian Terry Waite questioning the safety of the conviction of the law student Mark Alexander for murdering his conman father Samuel in Buckinghamshire in 2009, is it time that this curious case was reviewed?
“Locking people up should be our last resort when all else has failed, not a knee-jerk reaction” concludes prisoner Mark Alexander in his two-and-a-half page contribution to The Monument Fellowship’s Crime and Consequence: What should happen to people who commit criminal offences? in September 2019.
In another paper, published by the University of Ottawa in December 2018 and titled A Phenomenology of Freedom: finding transcendence in captivity, the University of London law graduate added: “Prisons, like Jurassic Park, are anachronistic institutions. When ‘the owl of Minerva takes flight,’ our descendants will look upon the use of imprisonment with the same horror and shame with which we view slavery, torture, and the death penalty today.” One would expect such virtue signalling from someone who believes they’ve been wrongly imprisoned, but now, with new evidence available, we join those asking: “Could Mark Alexander have actually been wrongly convicted of the murder of his father Samuel Alexander?”
Mark Alexander was found guilty of the murder of his “controlling” father on a date unknown between September 2009 and February 2010 “by a majority verdict and on the basis of circumstantial evidence only.” He was imprisoned for life at the age of 22 in September 2010 and after refusing to take a manslaughter plea at trial, thus lost the chance for release for at least sixteen years.
In spite of no forensic evidence being found that linked him to his 70-year-old father’s killing and burial underneath a 29-centimetre thick slab of concrete in the garden of their Drayton Parslow, Buckinghamshire home, Mark Alexander was convicted on the basis of the evidence of “suspicious neighbours” and his strange behaviour after his father “disappeared.”
Without doubt, amongst other actions, sending Christmas cards with his father’s name on when he did not know his actual whereabouts made investigating officers suspicious of Mark Alexander, but now, ten years after his jailing, new evidence has come to light that raises issues about the safety of his conviction.
On the homepage of the ‘Justice for Mark Alexander’ campaign website, the issues with the verdict are surmised as follows: “Mark has always maintained his innocence… Mark was found guilty on the basis of doubt created about his version of events rather than any evidence of his involvement in a murder. No such evidence exists. There is no known cause, or date, of death – and there were no traces of DNA, blood, or even fingerprints linking Mark to the crime.”
This month, however, the Mirror’s Tom Pettifor and Robin Eveleigh highlighted other issues that have been discovered since sentencing, amongst them that “secretive” Samuel Alexander was in fact a conman operating with “at least eleven aliases.” Aside from a caution for shoplifting in 1995, however, the Egypt born pensioner was not convicted of crimes that numbered mortgage fraud involving a number of properties. The “confidence trickster” and “fraudster” undoubtedly had enemies and as his son told the paper: “Dad always seemed to be running or hiding from something.”
Using human rights laws, Mark Alexander was, in March this year, able to finally obtain files documenting his father’s multiple identities from Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs. He became supposedly the first person in Britain to achieve such access and now also, according to the Daily Mail’s Alice Cachia and Robin Eveleigh: “[The Justice for Mark Alexander’ campaign] are also developing new mobile phone cell site evidence which they hope will provide proof of Alexander’s movements around the time of his father’s death.” They hint that this will show he could not possibly have been present at the time of the murder and burial.
Further highlighting the plainly deviant lifestyle of Samuel Alexander – a man described by Judge Reddihough at sentencing as someone who operated by “control” and “fear” – it has been revealed the pensioner spent “long hours on the computer surfing teenage chat rooms and sex websites, sometimes posing as a man in his late teens or early 20.” Could it be that he upset someone in the process and could they be his true killer?
Samuel Alexander lied also to his son about what had happened to his mother also and told him she had died of cancer. The pair were only reunited after Mark Alexander’s arrest and it can now be revealed he cheated her as part of a property scam also and of the case, the greatly respected humanitarian Terry Waite CBE has examined it also. He turned specifically to the way in which Samuel Alexander had been buried and remarked:
“I am disturbed by the conviction of Mark as I find it difficult to believe that a complete forensic examination was conducted before the jury found him guilty by a majority verdict. It was pointed out by the judge in his summing-up that the evidence was circumstantial, but even so he was convicted and sentenced.”
“A forensic investigation of the site was conducted by a chartered engineer and chartered geologist in 2017. This examination ought to have been conducted before the trial, but for reasons unknown to me it was not. Given that the site had been excavated by the police when searching for the body and afterwards refilled it was not possible for the expert to be totally certain about the dates when the different levels of concrete were laid. However, his conclusions, which are fully recorded in his report, suggest that the top level of concrete could not have been laid by Mark Alexander as he was not in that location at that time and can prove this. The report raises in my mind a reasonable doubt as to the safety of this conviction.”
Pictured top: Mark Alexander at his graduation ceremony with Terry Waite CBE.
Mark Alexander and his late father Samuel Alexander.The scene of the burial (but not necessarily the killing) of Samuel Alexander – 2 Prospect Close, Drayton Parslow, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, MK17 0JB.An aerial shot of the property.Documentary evidence of Samuel Alexander using aliases that show him to have been a man capable of perpetrating fraud and deception.On Friday 28th September 2018, Mark Alexander played at a charity concert for The Howard League of Penal Reform at HM Prison Coldingley in Bisley, Surrey. Terry Waite CBE read from ‘Out of the Silence,’ his book about his 1,763 days in captivity from 1987 to 1991 in Lebanon.
Derbyshire Police yet again show themselves inept at the art of public relations in tweeting about trying to locate a man who kissed a woman on the cheek to thank her for helping him with his lorry
The “busybodies” of Derbyshire Police will forever be remembered as the dunces of the 2020 coronavirus lockdown.
In a post shared on their own website and online via social media also on Friday, the plainly inept manager of communications for this force shared an appeal. Its wording was beyond weak and its content laughable. The text read:
We are appealing for help to identify a man who kissed a woman on the cheek to thank her for helping when his lorry became stuck under a low bridge.
The incident occurred between 12pm and 4pm on Tuesday, 28 April, in Dale Road, Matlock.
The heavy goods vehicle had become stuck and the woman, who is in her 70s, helped the men to ensure the lorry did not hit the bridge.
After the lorry became unstuck one of the men in the lorry left the vehicle, thanked the woman and kissed her on the cheek.
Officers want to speak to anyone who was in the area at time and may be able to help our enquiries into the incident – of particular interest are any drivers who were in the area at the time and may have captured the lorry on dashcam.
Anyone with any information is asked to contact Derbyshire police.
Slammed previously by amongst others Lord Sumption for their “hysteria” during lockdown, Derbyshire Police subsequently were inundated by Twitter users astounded that this ‘matter’ was being shared publicly.
In response, the force’s Twitter manager announced: “This would be classed as a sexual assault as the woman did not want the man to kiss her on the cheek… We’d just like to identify and speak to the man we’ve described at this moment in time.”
Without explaining how a kiss could have lasted from 12pm to 4pm and whether they’d caught the lorry driver who likes to thank with a kiss, Derbyshire Police subsequently deleted their original tweet about the matter. They did not, however, manage to delete the thousands of outraged and mocking responses.
Pictured top: A young man kissing and an older woman. We cannot confirm whether or not the young man in the image committed a crime or not or whether the older of the pair was a willing participant.
The ‘kiss’ occurred within a window of a four-hour time period on Dale Road, Matlock, Derbyshire in the vicinity of this bridge allegedly. Derbyshire Police’s appeal was issued on their website (left) and online via Twitter (right) also.In response to mockery and outrage from Twitter users, the force used their own account to attempt to justify their actions. Their strategy was subsequently met with further derision.
As Nigel Farage ludicrously suggests Britain is “a country of doubtful democratic legitimacy” (in spite of it giving him the Brexit he so desired this very year), we join those suggesting that this furious Firestarter is still very welcome to leave
“This incident has confirmed my worst fears about the country Britain is becoming” wrote Nostradamus-like Nigel Farage in The Telegraph on Tuesday evening. The same Farage, that is, that was celebrating Boris Johnson and Brexit on 31st January in Parliament Square; the same Farage who finally had the Darling Buds of May mixed with Last of the Summer Wine pastiche version of Britain he has for so long dreamt of.
Farage, at that moment, was “optimistic” and “celebrating the free world” and whilst braying about his dream having finally come true, boldly went as far as to state: “This is the greatest moment ever in the history of our great nation.”
Now, it’s all gone so horribly wrong. After having a visit from the police as a result of breaching lockdown restrictions that ordinary people have willingly obeyed, Farage angrily proclaimed of the police: “I was astonished and, although I remained polite, incredulous. I replied: ‘I’m not going to take that.’”
Continuing his diatribe about what he calls the “new police state” run for the “sneerocracy,” hypocritical Farage – whose two children have German passports (which allows them continued free movement in Europe) – concluded: “I don’t know if I will be stopped and fined if I attempt to do my job again. However, I will look at the shipping forecast. Without question, on the next calm day they will come again, and I will be there to cover this scandal.”
Perhaps, instead, of meddling at a time of pandemic lockdown when his interventions are most definitely not required, this berk could just adapt the advice of Norman Tebbitt and get in a boat. Nigel Farage could sail away to somewhere he’s actually wanted – that being his very own mecca, Trumpland. There, in the manner of Dick Whittington, this fervent Firestarter might even find the streets paved with currency to replace that that he used to take in very, very generous EU expenses.
Jeremy Bamber’s legal team go to the high court after it emerges that the CPS may have handed crucial evidence – not available to them – to an author involved in the ITV drama ‘White House Farm’
On Friday, at an oral renewal hearing in Leeds, the high court will be asked to “review the refusal of the Crown Prosecution Service to disclose evidence they believe could undermine [the] conviction” of Jeremy Bamber according to the Guardian’sSimon Hattenstone.
“Since proceedings were issued it came to our attention that the author of the book the ITV drama was based upon [Carol Ann Lee] appears to have received material directly from the police [images of which she shared on Instagram and later deleted].”
“It cannot be right that an author has been given material that Mr Bamber’s defence team have not seen, particularly in light of the persistent refusal by the CPS to disclose specific material we have been asking for. It raises the question of whether a work of fiction is more important than justice.”
Illustrating her tellingly selective thoughts on what evidence should be released, to whom and where, in an interview with the East Anglian Daily Times in January this year, Ms Lee – whose son also worked with her on the White House Farm drama – stated:
“My personal opinion is very much that he’s guilty. He’s been in prison for 30 years and the evidence he was convicted on has not been overturned. He’s been appealing ever since he’s been in prison and nothing has come out that has been able to overturn that conviction… And for me the overriding piece of evidence, if you like, was looking at the original crime scene photographs. Without going into detail, it was obvious from one of the photographs in particular, that has never been published and should never be published, that those murders were committed by somebody who was extremely adept with a gun – who knew what they were doing.”
Responding and speaking of news of Friday’s hearing from Wakefield prison to the Guardian, Jeremy Bamber commented:
“It is disgusting that a third party was provided with documents and sensitive photographs when Essex police and the CPS have been unwilling to hand over material to our own forensic experts to prove that two silencers were recovered from the scene.”
“Despite court orders being in place for them to make full disclosure to us, which they deliberately chose to ignore, when Carol Ann Lee requested material she was given it without a second thought. Where is my justice?”
A classic ‘rags to riches’ tale is that of Penny Streeter. Born in what was then Rhodesia, this police superintendent’s daughter came to England when she was 12 and worked on Margaret Thatcher’s Youth Training Scheme and in Pizzaland at the age of 16. She went into business with her mother at 22, went bust and after ending up living in a homeless refuge with her children, worked her way back and launched what has become A24 Group, a healthcare recruitment agency in 1995. By 2002, this hard-working woman’s company was the “fastest-growing company in the UK” and in 2019, she was listed as being worth £208 million in The Sunday Times ‘Rich List.’ Streeter and her husband now own a vineyard in South Africa and a winery in Horsham, West Sussex. We say: Cheers to her!
Attacked for just £1,000 in his own home in Parkway, Camden, NW1 on Christmas Day 1995, Derry born police mechanic Alan Holmes was left “tightly tied” to his bed, face down and fully clothed for ten days in a building where he was the last remaining tenant. Discovered only after he failed to show up for work on the 4th January 2006, he survived for one night more and was able to explain the appalling crime perpetrated upon him before dying as a result of “horrendous injuries,” blood clotting and dehydration at University College Hospital, Bloomsbury. In spite of a £20,000 reward and (sadly too grainy to be of much use) CCTV images of individuals using his bank cards being made public, Mr Holmes’ “cold and ruthless” murderers have never been apprehended. Of this generous “quiet soul” and multiple sclerosis sufferer, his sister, Mavis Yule, later remarked: “He was a friendly, gentle person. He loved poetry and should have been a writer. He was very kind and would have given you the shirt off his back. Living in London, he saw people begging and sleeping in doorways. He felt very sorry for these people. He may have given them money for soup or given them a blanket – but he would never have let anybody he did not know into his flat.” In 2016, Richard Osley, the deputy editor of the Camden New Journal, rightly asked: “Who killed Alan Holmes? We have to keep asking… As clichéd and contrived as it may sound, Alan Holmes, the police mechanic who was starved in his own home, is the ghost of NW1’s Christmas past… An appeal might seem like a token gesture, a shot in the dark, but it’d be something.”
Watch ‘Crimewatch’s’ report on the case (aired Thursday 29th February 1996 at 10pm on BBC1), go to 5:20 minutes to start:
The last known photograph of Alan Holmes, enjoying the company of friends on 25th December 1995 (as seen on the BBC’s ‘Crimewatch’).
Matthew Steeples remembers the motor racing legend Sir Stirling Moss, “the greatest driver never to have won the world championship”
Mille Miglia-winning Sir Stirling Moss, whose death at the age of 90 was announced this morning, remarkably survived falling down the lift shaft of his Mayfair home in 2010. He also kept road traffic policemen in punchlines with the infamous and much quoted: “Who do you think you are? Stirling Moss?”
Resilient and witty to the end, Sir Stirling himself famously came out with quips such as: “If God had meant for us to walk, why did he give us feet that fit car pedals?” and “There are two things no man will admit he cannot do well: drive and make love.” When he got banned from driving in 1960, he took it with good spirit and reportedly even bravely allowed the late, great Marisa Masters – a lady certainly not known for her driving skills – to ferry him around. She often recounted how she “taught him about speed” as she motored round with him and a bottle of sambuca (to keep her going).
Sir Stirling hit “third time lucky” in marrying the loveliest of ladies, Susie Paine, in 1980 and together they had a son, Elliot. Even after taking ill with a serious chest infection in 2016 and subsequently retiring from public life, he remained jovial and as this British sporting legend motors off into the sky, I join those saluting this king of the fast lane.
