My lovely wife of nearly forty years summed it up fairly well yesterday evening when, after listening to the idiot ambulance chasing solicitor, Andrew Reid on News At One on BBC Radio 4, said “I think the world has gone friggin’ mad”. Now Helen, as that is who it is who has shared my life these past few decades, does not normally descend to the gutter like that but she had got upset with the antics of the said Reid and his client, the scion of that famous construction family, Alistair McAlpine. However I thought she had hit the nail perfectly on the head and to go any further would only over-egg the matter.
She was of course talking about Reid’s idea that anybody who has thought bad about his lord and customer, Magulpin, should make tracks instantly to his office door and volunteer their malcontention and hand over everything they have for distribution amongst the good and holy. Reid is the R in RMPI, which stands for Reid Minty Personal Injury, a “no win, no fee” firm of grubby legal types and here he was propounding his view to the poor people of England and North Wales that if you sit in front of a microphone and talk earnestly about some form of contaminated truth, the imbeciles listening will believe you. Some hope.
He was trying to drum up custom for his and Alistair’s fragile, frail line of attack against the poor little people who had twittered and blogged about his lordships unlikely, possible, probable relationship with abuse of young children in various council care homes but especially the unlikely, possible, probable connection with Bryn Estyn in North Wales.
This fragile, frail line of attack has already filched £185,000 off the BBC after their Newsnight programme on BBC2 did not even mention Lord Macs unlikely, possible, probable attachment to that home. They, the McAlpine/RMPI alliance not content with the easy mazuma from the BBC, which interestingly was not BBC money but you poor bastard licence payers funds which you seem to give up annually to watch tosh. Come to think of it because you all seem happy converting hard earned into licence fees, why don’t you now just open your wallets and throw what cash you have onto the fire. I digress, this Mac/RMPI alliance are now going after Phillip Scholfield and ITV for passing a note to his highness, Cameron, during a television interview last week when he also did not mention Mr Mac and they are going after them big style for a million spondulicks.
Now this is a great game if you have the neck to go for it and Mr Reid seems to have acres of it. Hitting big institutions for not saying anything about anyone and getting them to cough up hundreds of thousands of livres because of their complete disregard for a client’s name. But old Alistair has been a tenacious guy all his life; he and I go back to the late 1960s so I should know. We often used to meet on building sites and Alice, for that was our dimunition of his christian name, loved nothing better than the rough and tumble of a site canteen. Alice was a sleek and strident young man albeit a couple of years older than me and a hairy arsed navvy used to send him all a quiver.
The problem with Alice, although it could be seen he was heading for greener pastures, was that he could never settle down for long enough. He was buying Moroccan savouries from dodgy fellows in long white dresses one minute, worrying sheep in northern Western Australia the next. There is a saying that a new Broome sweeps clean and that is what he did with whole flocks of ewes on those god forsaken fringes of the Great Sandy Desert.
His forays into foreign parts and not always foreign, as some were tory toffs from finishing schools all round the country, were legendary and had to be covered by smoke screens. A succession of tartlets, with exotic names like Romilly and Athena, would sign up to a marriage licence for a number of years and then go their merry way, overloaded with dosh from his tax free capers. Athena by the way is a distant cousin of mine, from the Cholmondley Malpi branch and believe you me we were glad to off load her. Even though she was 30 years his junior she had been round the block a few times but I have to say she was a gay old filly and well worth a few seconds of Alice’s time. Athena had been born in Amiens Street in Dublin in the early 1970s to an ill conceived union between an out of work donner kebab chef and an unlucky longshoreman of a woman. She had a rowing boat that dealt in contraband and during a crossing to North Wales one day, the boat and her sank has she tried to smuggle in tampered lamb from Anglesey. Athena needed a mother figure and that is why she jumped at the chance with Alice.
Now you know some of what I have just written is rubbish, a bit of a joke. I did it to create a smoke screen to what really happened. Just like Alistair and Andrew, the BBC and ITV, Phillip Scholfield and Cameroony are doing with these stunts on television. No money passes hands, it is just that minds are diverted from the truth we are after, to fiddle-de-dee rubbish that we see and hear. The powers need these diversions badly as we seekers draw ever closer to the door of truth.