Category: Malpractice

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West Yorkshire Police Caught Out Over Serious Misconduct Issue

When caught out the first reaction of many police officers is to lie.

The blog entry below relates to an illegal arrest and breach of PACE by West Yorkshire Police. Even by the low standards of that force this is a shocker.

This blog entry also relates to a effort to hide information by Plod’s Right of Access dept. and a clear effort to deceive by West Yorkshire Police Professional Standards dept.

The last two offences were exposed by the active intervention of The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) who have forced police to produce documents Plod has spent the best part of a year trying to hide precisely because they prove misconduct in public office.

The background to the complaint is related to an ultra vires arrest of myself on 22nd of May 2020 without legal justification or reasonable grounds. Here’s a little background:

In May 2020 I was sent in error documents and data intended for the Metropolitan Police. This data concerned Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against an individual living in Kent and was sent to me accidentally by The Ministry of Justice.

The data amounted to a significant data breach containing as it did many personal and financial details for this man. Given the seriousness of this I informed The Information Commissioner’s Office that a significant data breach had taken place.

Four days later I was arrested by West Yorkshire Police on the request of The Ministry of Justice under allegations that I myself had breached The Data Protection Act.

This is of course not true. Emails obtained from the Data Security Manager at HMCTS Liverpool state that they intend to have me arrested “to give him a shock” following my referral of this matter to ICO. And of course the matter was not pursued beyond the inconvenience of arrest.

This arrest also resulted in the removal of electronic devices from my home containing legally privileged, legally professionally privileged and litigation privileged materials stored electronically on those devices. This is a breach of PACE 19.6. The subsequent examination of the contents of these devices by digital forensics officers at West Yorkshire Police without triage of the privileged contents amounts to a breach of common law, which Plod then tried to hide.

As you might expect from the generally inept nature of this force the efforts to hide the data on this illegal examination resulted in the eventual revelation of misconduct in public office.

A complaint about the illegal arrest was made to West Yorkshire Police Professional Standards (PSD) in June 2020.

Part of the response to this dated 14.8.21 from the reliably evasive PC Vicky Silver at West Yorkshire Police PSD states:

The devices which were seized from your home were booked into property stores under crime reference 13200256161 and itemised to be ‘Nokia Mobile phone’ Exhibit reference DMW1 and a ‘HP Laptop’ Exhibit reference DMW2, seized devices were booked into property with the intention for these to be examined, upon the MoJ being informed of the process and timescales involved they requested no further action be taken and for your devices to be returned. PS Shand confirmed no examination took place on your devices and they were not examined, nor switched on whilst in Police possession. The records held show the devices were only removed from property stores in order to affect their return to yourself. 

Much of the above was a lie. The most significant elements of which West Yorkshire Police have now been caught out on. 

PS Shand refers to Police Sgt. Anthony (Tony) Shand. The disclosures forced by ICO show that his testimony to PSD regarding the devices not being digitally examined was a lie.

The Information Commissioner’s Office has been involved in a data access request made to Right of Access at West Yorkshire Police from August 2020. This request was originally made 27.8.20.

West Yorkshire Police Right of Access dept. has ever since been attempting to withhold evidence such as radio traffic, CCTV footage and the record of what happened to the electronic devices when in police custody.

The below is an extract from a Right of Access dept. letter to me dated 5.3.21. It can be seen that both the image showing the property record is cropped and they also deny the items were taken out of the property store for digital examination.

Cropped at the point of items being booked in. ICO later compelled the release of the unedited data.

ICO as Right of Access department’s professional regulator has made an active intervention and compelled the release of documents from West Yorkshire Police which were previously withheld.

These documents show the booking out of the electronic devices when in the property store for digital forensic examination, thus breaching common law, as of course legally privileged materials were stored on them. The version seen above was cropped to hide the removal of the devices for examination, breaching common law in so doing.

A copy of the most recent disclosure showing the data which ICO forced police to disclose is below. This shows data wholly contrary to what was stated in the PSD complaint response, seen above, of August 2020 and Right of Access department’s response of March 2021. The devices clearly were removed on the dates shown for digital forensic examination. Below is seen the unedited version of the property record – that shown above was edited by Right of Access dept. to remove incriminating data.

Laptop booked out for forensic examination 26.5.20 and returned to property store 10.6.21.
Likewise phone booked out on same date and later returned when examined.

On this basis PS Tony Shand in his testimony to PSD and PC Vicky Silver both sought to purposefully mislead in the response to the complaint made.

Right of Access dept. also sought to mislead in their response to me of March 2021 and further edited the property record by cropping out the incriminating data.

Both departments and individuals at West Yorkshire Police have stated things that they know to be untrue in an effort to avoid professional embarrassment, an allegation of misconduct in public office and the breaching of Common Law in relation to privileged material on the electronic devices. There is also the breach of PACE 19.6 in the removal of the devices from my home.

Right of Access dept. attempted to withhold the relevant document until instructed by their professional regulator ICO to release the information. Indeed an examination of the images on this page shows that they deliberately cropped the first disclosure sent to me in March 2020 to hide data. This amounts to a breach of S.77 of FOI 2000 by West Yorkshire Police as there has been a purposeful effort to hide relevant data. This is a criminal offence under the relevant Act.

That there existed significant opportunity for WYP to produce the relevant data prior to ICO intervention but they avoided doing so to try to hide misconduct in relation to the electronic devices.

The purpose of withholding the data was to avoid professional embarrassment to West Yorkshire Police over a breach of Common Law in the retention and examination of legally privileged material contrary PACE 19.6 and the seizure and retention of the same without a warrant.

It is now clear from the disclosure made as the result of pressure from ICO that West Yorkshire Police has not only committed purposeful misconduct in public office over the seizure, retention and examination of legally privileged material without a warrant but also that they have attempted to cover this up by wholly misleading statements in the complaint response and the subsequent effort made to hide disclosure requested.

Had ICO not forcibly intervened in this matter then the degree of misconduct and breach of legally privileged material would have remained hidden.

Given that they lie so glibly over such a serious matter none of the other assertions made by West Yorkshire Police Professional Standards dept. in any complaint response can be trusted to be factual and truthful.

As anyone who has ever dealt with that department will be aware!

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CPS Caught Out Lying. Again!

There’s few more enjoyable things in life than catching out a liar.

Senior CPS official and CPS Civil Legal caught out lying to the court and the public.

And with such as The Crown Prosecution Service you won’t have to wait long to do this. In the same way as Boris Johnson is capable of three lies before breakfast the CPS loves to try to mislead to cover up the incompetent and vindictive behaviour of its staff.

It’s all about maintaining a sense of professional reputation of course. This is the aim above all else. It comes below proving a professional, effective and efficient service and it leads CPS to try to bend the truth when they’ve been caught out. As happens here.

The joy of this is that they’ve been caught out twice over basically the same thing.

Here’s how this took place.

In a case in which I was involved at The High Court sitting at Leeds the CPS provided data for the Court and a copy was sent to me. The data supplied was factually inaccurate and highly damaging. CPS knew that the data was factually wrong but went ahead anyway on the basis that it would provide them with a tactical advantage in proceedings.

The data was supplied by a Tracy Wareham of CPS Yorkshire and Humberside. Oddly the wife of Gerry Wareham, the head of that division. If her relationship status has anything to do with her continued employment or not given the things she gets up to I couldn’t say.

Wareham supplied a copy of this data to me in advance of the hearing & was warned some weeks prior that the data was factually wrong, damaging, libellous and in need of urgent correction. She failed to make any effort to correct this in advance of the hearing or to research why the data was wrong in response to my emails.

Her actions amount to a breach of GDPR and The Data Protection Act.

The wrong data supplied was sufficiently damaging and serious to cause significant loss to me. The lie put before the Court was of epic proportions.

Nor was this a consequence-free lie. CPS misled the Court in order to gain tactical material advantage.

CPS Civil Legal dept. created an arguably bigger mistake when they tried to cover this up a few weeks later. In an email to me they claimed that the error was corrected pre-hearing and that this limited the damage caused.

This is of course another lie!

Copies of the emails between Wareham and the Court were supplied to me by Leeds Combined Court and show that no such efforts to correct the data in time were made.

Therefore CPS Civil Legal Services have lied to try to cover up the actions of a senior employee who breached GDPR and The Data Protection Act to try to gain material advantage within a civil hearing by misleading the Court.

Seen below is the email to CPS Civil Legal Dept. exposing their lie. Slight edits made to some lines of text to remove personal details.

Don’t assume that The Crown Prosecution Service is out to tell the truth, be open or is even competent enough to get the basics right. If the opportunity’s there to gain advantage in any situation staff will behave mendaciously and allow their internal departments to try cover up for their behaviour. In this instance both the original person and the department have been significantly caught out. The court has been invited to take action in relation to the supply of a misleading statement in proceedings and The Information Commissioner’s Office has been informed.

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Judicial Bias on Legal Loans Issue?

The link to an excellent article from Byline Times regarding exorbitant and manipulative legal loans which catch people at their most emotionally vulnerable and go on to exploit them financially.

Divorced From Reality: How Legal Loans Racked Up Half a Million Debt for a Standard Divorce

The article contains the following, amidst criticism of a company called RafeSetter:

In a recent remote court hearing, RateSetter’s chief commerical officer Peter Behrens acknowledged that Sophia being more than £600,000 in debt may be an example of “mismanaged litigation”. Asked what action the company had taken to ensure Sophia was not vulnerable, Behrens said that the lender had done “enough to make ourselves comfortable”.

Mr Judge Raeside, presiding over this hearing, ruled as “fair” her debt from two high interest divorce loans. But Sophia said: “I just know that a lot of people will be coming out of lockdown and divorcing. I don’t want this to happen to anybody else.”

The real story here is that RateSetter’s Peter Behrens is the son of former District Judge John Behrens, now retired. Behrens senior and Judge Raeside were close colleagues at the bar.

How odd then that Judge Raeside did not recuse himself from dealing with a case involving his old friend’s son and found in the favour of the company at which Peter Behrens is chief commercial officer!

Would be curious to know how many other claims involving RateSetter have come before Judge Raeside and what the result of those were.

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The Definition of Institutional Corruption

Private Investigator Daniel Morgan was murdered in South London in 1987. His killer has never been found.

Morgan’s employer Southern Investigations went on after his death to provide stories for the Murdoch press, often obtained illegally.

The murder however set in chain a series of investigations which have revealed links between police, the Murdoch controlled newspaper company News International and organised criminal groups. Is is widely thought that Morgan was on the verge of revealing links between corrupt police officers and organised criminals. This is certainly the belief of the Morgan family.

The Metropolitan Police carried out an initial sub-optimal investigation with basic elements of police work left undone. This happened on more than one occasion as successive investigations were botched. Of course police would not have been inclined to investigate properly if they thought the murder would reveal ongoing corruption or even their own involvement in Morgan’s death to hide what he knew.

This has resulted in several re-investigations and an independent panel (the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel) headed by Baroness O’Loan which produced its long-awaited report last week. (written in June 2021).

Another element of this case worthy of note is that the police and other organisations were accused by the panel of institutional corruption.

This was defined by the panel as:

“Concealing or denying failings, for the sake of the organisation’s public image, is dishonesty on the part of the organisation for reputational benefit and constitutes a form of institutional corruption.”

The report into the murder makes depressing reading. It details how The Metropolitan Police systemically failed the Morgan family and then lied and attempted to cover up their failures in order to preserve their professional reputation.

Again this is a pattern familiar to anyone who has dealt at any level with the organisations I mention in this blog.

On that basis all of the organisations mentioned in this blog to date are also institutionally corrupt since they also conceal or deny failures to maintain a professional reputation. That this takes place even in the face of overwhelming evidence of incompetence, deceit and failure.

Arguably since 1987 this kind of behaviour has grown more prevalent from state-run organisations. Again the report states there was a failure in the Morgan case:

“to acknowledge professional incompetence, individuals’ venal behaviour, and managerial and organisational failures”.

The British state has a pattern of dealing with the failure of its agents and organisations. The Morgan family’s statement following the results of the panel say that:

“At almost every step, we found ourselves lied to, fobbed off, bullied, degraded and let down, time and time again.”

Again since 1987 the means by which state funded organisations deny error, evade blame and continue to practice incompetence and institutional corruption have been refined and improved with each passing decade.

The panel found that:

“culture of obfuscation and a lack of candour is unhealthy in any public service”

Danial Morgan’s brother has stated:

“police don’t like to own up to anything” and that his “experience of the police over many, many years is that they put their own reputation over anything else”.

To relate that to the wider picture again I say that this is equally true any of the organisations mentioned in this blog.

The Met has attempted to downplay the panel’s findings by claiming the conclusions it reached applied to the police 35 years ago. This is a standard diversion tactic organisations use.

Panel member Professor Rodney Morgan shot back that “institutional corruption is not used in a historic sense – it is used in a current sense”.

You may be interested to learn that Britain is the most corrupt country in the world, according to journalist Roberto Saviano, who spent more than a decade exposing the criminal dealings of the Italian Mafia.

You can read more on the Daniel Morgan murder and the fallout from the recent report here: /https://bylinetimes.com/2021/06/15/the-daniel-morgan-report-from-institutional-racism-to-institutional-corruption-no-hierarchy-of-sickness-in-met-police-failures-says-morgan-fami/

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Top Tips for Aspiring Criminals

Have you ever seen a magician who happens to be very capable at making watches, wallets and suchlike vanish from your pocket or wrist? It’s quite a sight when someone that capable manages to remove something from your person without you being aware of it.

A friend of mine works for a local police force. Every so often he updates me on all the recent criminal activity they’ve not been able to stop. Generally it’s quite a lot: they’re forever behind the curve and not in front of it.

But like with the magician who can remove your watch or wallet in a stage show once you know what’s happening it’s easier to not let it happen to you. So here’s a couple of tips which might help you to protect yourself.

There are two big recent growth areas of crime. The first of these is the theft of high powered vehicles. Audi’s seem to be targeted especially at present and are then broken down for parts: Audi spares being especially expensive.

A nice new Audi.
Probably won’t be there for long!

One village with only about 140 homes was recently targeted. Each night over seven nights two homes were burgled and car keys removed. These days this sometimes comes with an assault on the homeowner if the burglar is disturbed. In the olden days such a thief would make off in fear when an upstairs light came on.

The second growth area is the wedding robbery. This again takes place by stealth. At a busy wedding the criminal (often a young woman between 18-30 years old who no-one would otherwise suspect) invites herself. When everyone is dancing around at the end of the night jewels, gold and expensive watches are removed from wrists, necks etc. and often looked after by elderly relatives who are not dancing themselves. This is when the sneak thief strikes & distraction techniques seem to be used. The gangs concerned in this type of robbery seem especially to be targeting Asian weddings.

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A Christmas Card from Humberside Police!

I’ve written on here many times before about how Humberside Police are particularly useless, even in a hotly contested field of local forces.

However even I fell off my chair at the sheer incompetence of the subject access response provided by their Information Compliance department this week.

A subject access request provided by the force amounts to a nonfeasance as the response:

1. Fails to provide the data requested.

2. Is issued outside the legal time limit for a response to be provided.

3. Repeats back the same information put in the original request.

Here’s the letter in full. I have redacted the header.

The key sentences are in the fourth and fifth paragraphs seen above. These are reproduced from the original request. Data cannot be obtained from the Police National Computer – however data that has been entered into the PNC by a local force can be obtained from the same regional police force. Hence the request to Humberside Police.

The substantive reply is seen below:

Here we focus on the second paragraph. It essentially repeats the data I put to police in the first instance.

Consequently the force has failed to react correctly to the subject access request in every conceivable aspect.

This suggests that the intention is to continue frustrate any further request made for the data using the rights conferred in italics in the letter to do so as the response to any further requests that might be made.

The Information Commissioner’s Office has been informed.

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The Mendacity of HMCTS

This post details the extent to which HMCTS will seek to lie and mislead in order to avoid admitting a clear service level error made by court staff, particularly when such an error is serious enough to amount to a breach of a person’s right of access to justice or human rights.

Below is a copy of an email sent earlier today to Customer Investigations at HMCTS. They are the final stage of appeal in the event that court staff make serious errors in the handling of civil claims. 

It follows two separate instances of the Court Manager at Leeds Combined Court, Joanne Town, seeking to deliberately mislead in her replies to a complaint. The original complaint was that court staff failed to notify me of a hearing taking place into two claims – they only informed me of a third taking place on the same date in November.

Joanne Town states that these two claims were not heard on the relevant date. All available evidence including an Order from the hearing proves her wrong but she maintains her position twice over.

This behaviour and the original error of the court failing to inform me of dates for two claims to be heard represents sufficiently shocking behaviour that I share the email I have sent to Customer Investigations in its entirety below. 

The email begins… 

I refer to the issue below as a formal complaint to Customer Investigations. 

On 11.11.20 a hearing took place at Leeds Combined Court in [REDACTED]. I was unable to attend this hearing. Also in the same hearing two other claims were heard. These being [REDACTED] & [REDACTED]. I was not notified that these claims were to be heard on that date at the same time as [REDACTED]. A formal complaint was therefore made to Leeds Combined Court. It is a fundamental aspect of access to justice that a Claimant should be able to attend hearings in relation to claims he has brought. Indeed CPR enshrines such rights. Article 6 of The Human Rights Act states the right to be a fair and public trial or hearing at which I am allowed representation if a public authority is making a decision that has a impact upon my civil rights or obligations. The failure to notify in respect of two claims in which I was Claimant taking place on 11.11.20 thus activates my Article 6 rights. By failure to inform of hearings taking place on 11.11.20 HMCTS has breached my Article 6 rights. 

Firstly as can be seen from the email below no communication was received as sent on 7.12.20 by Leeds Combined Court. A copy of a letter dated 7.12.20 has been sent to me by email today in relation to my query regarding a level two response. 

The onus of the complaint to Customer Investigations is as follows: 

The response provided on 23.11.20 and that dated 7.12.20 both state: 

The court did not receive any applications or fees on [REDACTED] & [REDACTED] to set aside, vary or discharge the order of Mr. Justice Lavender dated 27th February 2020 and as such these cases were not listed on the 11th November 2020 these files were not forwarded to the Judge

Further that the position as outlined above is the same argument outlined by the Court in its defence in the 23.11.20 email. There has therefore been no review of the appeal to the first stage complaint response. It would additionally appear that no further investigations into the matter have taken place by Leeds. A simple check of the Order of 11.11.20 would have shown Joanne Town that the statements she has made are wholly factually wrong. 

I attach further a copy of an Order made on 11.11.20 in the matters of [REDACTED], [REDACTED] & [REDACTED]. This clearly shows that the matters of G00LS437 & [REDACTED] WERE heard on 11.11.20. I attach also a Notice of Hearing in respect of the 11.11.20 which is the only Notice of Hearing received in relation to any proceedings on this date. 
I was therefore not informed of the hearing of two other claims on 11.11.20. 

As a consequence of this both the email seen in the attached Word document from Joanne Town of November and the PDF of 7.12.20 also attached have deliberately and purposefully set out to misrepresent the facts, mislead and are a clear breach of the duty of care of the Court Manager to act with good faith in relation to service users. 
When you have a Court Manager who is prepared to mislead in such a way but is so easily caught out I would suggest that it’s pretty much the beginning of the end for HMCTS as an organisation. If you are incapable of honesty and integrity in your dealings with the public then any confidence in the organisation will vanish. The errors seen in the original complaint are compounded by the mendacity of the Court. 

I have additionally noted that Joanne Town has acted to respond to both the first and second stage of the complaints and as such there has been no actual second-stage review of the issues raised: the PDF of 7.12.20 simply repeats the response put in the original of 23.11.20. 

Consequently I appeal the second stage response on the basis that both that and the first stage response are wholly mendacious and fail to accept that a serious service level failure amounting to a breach of my Article 6 rights has occurred. The situation is no different to that of [REDACTED] in which the same Court Manager was aware that no action was taken in a claim for over a year but failed to respond to complaints in respect of that service level failure. 

As a consequence of the error by court staff I have had to make an application in respect of [REDACTED] & [REDACTED] which has also cost me money. 

In respect of this matter I seek a financial settlement appropriate to the breach of my rights by Leeds Combined Court in failing to notify of the hearings into [REDACTED] & [REDACTED] and the mendacious response of Court Manager Joanne Town. I have also lost time and amenity chasing this matter and have been vexed and harassed by the behaviour of the Court in respect of the original failure and the mendacious responses provided. I seek compensation in relation to these matters also. 

The behaviour of the Court Manager is sufficiently shocking that I believe others should be aware of this and as such the content of communications in this matter thus far – including this email – will be published online. 

I await your urgent response.

Letter ends.

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Greater Manchester Police in Special Measures

Flurry of activity at GMP in the last few days starting with this considerable shocker:

Overall GMP has been known to be a failing organisation for some time but no active intervention to stop the fall in service standards has been made by GMP itself, The Home Office or HM Inspectorate of Constabulary.

On Wednesday the Chief Constable, reckoned to be amongst the worst in a very competitive field, resigned citing “long term health issues”. None of these issues had been apparent or seemed to prevent him discharging his duties prior to Tuesday’s news regarding non-recording of crimes.

On Thursday the force was placed into special measures following Home Office intervention.

That’s a triple whammy of connected events.

Most interesting from my perspective is how GMP denied any failings in regards to service standards until the scandalous failure to record crimes became public. Like every British police force at present the effort made to hide errors and failures is tremendous. The mantra of the modern Chief Constable is that the professional reputation of the force must be maintained at all costs.

How many other forces will end up in special measures by the end of 2021? I’m willing to take bets on at least two.

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Crime Recording Standards, Werewolves & Other Inexplicable Phenomena

This blog post is best avoided being read on a full moon for reasons which will shortly become obvious.

In a meeting due to take place tomorrow, Friday 18th December the Ethics, Integrity and Complaints Committee of Leicestershire Police will discuss the reasons why the number of supposed rapes recorded by police are high while the number of prosecutions for the offence are low.

Current Labour Party leader Sir Kier Starmer is known to be one of the individuals behind the mantra of “we believe the victim”, a post-Saville call-to-arms which led to a turnaround in modern policing resulting in the prosecution of thousands of men for supposed historic sexual offences. Many of these men were geriatric and due to the passage of time since the supposed offences their accusers unable to produce physical evidence of wrongdoing. In the post-Saville climate however one person’s word against another remains sufficient to enable a wrongful conviction; particularly over something as emotive as a sexual offence allegation.

Some fifteen years ago the proportion of wrongfully convicted men in gaol was around one in twenty. The figures are likely presently significantly higher.

Yet an accusation of rape remains one of the problematic offences for police to investigate. The number of offences compared to the number of convictions carries a massive disparity. The Leicestershire Police report to be discussed tomorrow helps explain why.

You can read the leaked report into the matter below. It gives an insight into the level of lunacy currently practiced in the British Police overall.

The file is at http://www.leics.pcc.police.uk/DOCUMENT-LIBRARY/Transparency/Meetings/Ethics-Integrity-and-Complaint-Committee/2020/18th-December-2020/Item-8-Recording-of-Rape-Offences.pdf

Click to access Item-8-Recording-of-Rape-Offences.pdf

In short the statistics for such offences given to the public are wrong. Police have known they are wrong for some time and that they provide a wholly distorted and prejudicial view of the true extent of rape offences. The report explains why this is so.

The most memorable part of the report concerns a complaint by a woman of assault by a werewolf. An actual werewolf. Not just a hairy bloke. The matter took some four months to investigate at a cost of goodness knows what to the taxpayer.

🐺 – 🌕

The matter of supposed rape by a supernatural being is still recorded as an offence.

More serious is the extract below:

In short when a false claim of rape has occurred police do not obtain a retraction (failure to do so keeping the non-offence as a recorded offence) and police do not appear to seek to obtain a retraction as it would leave the complainant open to prosecution for wasting police time. This stops false accusers and compensation-seekers from being prosecuted and would enable them to “have another go” at a later date. The lucrative gravy-train of false allegations thus rolls on and everyone on the criminal justice system benefits. Except the poor bloody defendant of course.

If enough false accusers were to be prosecuted the well of complaints that the British police have been supping from since “We believe the victim” was introduced would shortly run dry.

This approach however is too common-sense. It would however solve the problem of false statistics and keep innocent men out of gaol.

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The Post-Truth Society

We have now become a society in which many people are lacking in the ability to use basic critical faculties regarding information they receive. Because of this they are more prepared to align their thinking with narrow, sectional interests.

These people can then be persuaded to perform activities which go against their own best interests and those of our wider society.

How has this happened and what purpose does the spread of disinformation and outright lies serve, particularly those in relation to COVID-19?

Funded by the sinister and obeyed by the stupid. An example of a type of sticker seen lots recently in our urban areas.

Disinformation comes like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It often seeks to persuade from a standpoint of “us against them”, as the above image shows. The two stickers above start by putting their arguments by claiming they are on the side of the people against the Government. This is palpably not true. In a situation in which there is a lethal pandemic the interests of the people are to protect themselves and those around them from the spread of the virus. Neither of these stickers promote this. They are actively against it and so to do as the first sticker suggests puts yourself and others at direct risk of harm. The second seeks to re-inforce the first by suggesting that the Government information on the pandemic is incorrect without stating what part is wrong. It’s there to build an atmosphere of mistrust to reinforce the message of the first sticker. And film director Ken Loach would also like his royalties for the misuse of the image.

Much of the anti-mask, “virus is a conspiracy theory” set have a series of narrow sectional interests that coincide with letting the virus rip through society. Thus they are not interested in your or my personal freedom. Claims that they are marching against the “new world order”, microchip implantation via vaccination and half a dozen other fabricated falsehoods are hooks to pull in the gullible into acting against their own best interests and starting up a culture war. If they were campaigning for freedom then there are plenty of existing worthy campaigns they could join to increase the freedom of action in society. Those run by groups such as Liberty spring to mind.

Being vaccinated is a pro-social act which actually does increase freedom. For a start the freedom not to be infected with a potentially lethal virus. Vaccination may not help you but it may stop others around you being infected. It is the apex of how society should reasonably operate: a partnership in which you take care of my interests and I take care of yours. Likewise wearing a mask in public places reduces the spread of COVID-19. This is also a pro-social act that helps everyone in society by stopping / slowing the rate of infection until the forthcoming vaccinations are widely taken up.

At present there are sufficient dark forces looking to destabilise society.

These amount to the usual ragbag of far left and far right groups, alongside our old chums the obstreperous and the contrarians who automatically are against whatever you might happens to be in favour of or any reasonably held consensus. These are operating alongside foreign powers who seek to destabilise western societies for their own ends. I suspect the stickers such as that seen in the image above are paid for and posted by such persons or else home-grown eugenics enthusiasts who have an honest (though morally repugnant) belief in survival of the fittest. None of these people have yours or my best interests at heart and they seek to persuade people to act against their own interests via a variety of underhanded means.

There was a time when such as vaccines etc. were understood to be a positive force: they enabled hundreds of millions of people to live without the fear of communicable and life-changing diseases such polio.

However thirty years of (1) a dumbed down eduction system (2) a media – especially newspapers – that prioritise showbiz news over critical analysis and readership engagement with the real world (3) social media allowing a slow-drip feed of misinformation and outright lies (4) Prior exposure by investigative journalists of genuine abuses of power which lend weight to the idea that there are further, hidden abuses of power happening beyond what we presently know about. I would add also (5) that the inept and incompetent handling of the pandemic by the UK Goverment has been sufficiently poor as to assist and promote misinformation about the virus and Government intentions. It is quite believable that COVID-19 is being allowed to spread through poor areas just like it was through nursing homes.

All these things have led to a position in which conspiracy theories such as those abounding around COVID-19 have fertile soil. They allow the sectional interest groups I have mentioned above to have a stronger foothold whereas many years ago they would have been confined to the crank fringes. If – as in happier times – the only means of getting your crackpot theories out into the world amounts to hand-printed leaflets and a sandwich board your theories won’t go far enough to harm others.

Harmful, unscientific and morally reprehensible ideas around COVID-19 are being freely disseminated. These are wrapped up in conspiracy theories in which the Government, Big Science and (in the USA at least) the “deep state” are said to be acting from sinister motives. These ideas promote a narrative in which persons acting against medical and scientific advice are seen to be expressing their individual freedoms in defiance of the state. This is simply wrong.

A conspiracy theory is a comforting thing: it offers a catch-all explanation for one or more of the wrongs of the world. Belief in such a conspiracy theory ennobles the believer with a sense of access to some secret knowledge or insight into how the world works; which does account for how difficult it is to prise people away from such theories once they start to head down one or more of the bizarre cul-de-sacs that conspiracy theories represent. It’s difficult to wean someone off a conspiracy theory as it requires the afflicted person admitting they were wrong and have had the wool pulled over their eyes.

People are prepared to believe all sorts of odd conspiracy theories but fail to see actual and genuine efforts to deprive them of their rights, money and liberty. The current UK scandal over sourcing of PPE equipment via lucrative contracts by the UK Government to Tory party donors and friends is a real-life conspiracy which has been ongoing since March 2020. Protests in the streets against this scandal: zero.

Conclusion: at least in part many people are being drawn to crackpot theories spun to create chaos and destabilise society via a variety of means. In worrying times people cling onto extreme views which seem to present a catch-all explanation for problems. That these ideas gain ground when people are unable to critically assess the sources of information they are presented with and the reasons they are being persuaded to act in a specific way.

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