Monday, January 28, 2008 

Migrants send our crime rates plummeting! (And can't some of them kill Maxine Carr for us?)

Well, the title of this post is probably more accurate than the Express headline.

Another day, another despicable Daily Express front page, this one based on even less verifiable facts than usual. The entire premise of the front page claim that "migrants" are behind a 35% rise in violence (in Kent, not across the country) is a letter from the chief constable of Kent police, Mike Fuller, sent to the Home Office. The Express doesn't provide the letter unexpurgated, and if Fuller did provide figures on arrests or statistics that directly related the increase to the actions of immigrants, the paper certainly doesn't provide it. More than anything, it comes across as a plea for more funding, with Fuller depending on the argument of increased migration to back him up, even quoting that the predicted population rise in Kent over the next 20 years is estimated to be 20%, although what that has to do with the here and now neither he nor the Express explains. As we saw last week, crime, apart from that involving guns and drugs, has actually fell: that the country is experiencing a crimewave due to migration as the Express is claiming is simply not backed up by the statistics.

The other main story on the Express front page, ignoring the latest bollocks about Madeleine, is the manufactured outrage about Maxine Carr apparently being pregnant. What that fact has to do with anyone other than Carr and her partner on its own is questionable enough, but the Express has pulled out all the stops to create one of the most vile, hate-filled articles you're likely to read in a tabloid this year:

Last night the news sent shockwaves through the Cambridgeshire village where Ian Huntley murdered 10-year-old friends Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in the summer of 2002.

One said it was disgraceful that the taxpayer was subisiding Carr’s lifestyle, adding: “It’s outrageous that this woman keeps demanding money from ordinary people. Has she no shame for what she did?”

Err, Carr doesn't seem to be demanding money from anyone. She does however quite clearly require protection, as those who have been mistaken for her have discovered.

Her actions delayed his arrest for a fortnight, adding to the distress for Holly and Jessica’s families. She posed as somebody trying to help to find the girls – all the time knowing that he had already killed them.

This is completely untrue. Carr believed Huntley's lies that he had not had anything to do with their disappearance, and as he had twice before been accused of rape, on one of which occasions the claim was false, she provided an alibi. On the night of the murders she had been visiting her mother in Grimsby, and was not involved in any whatsoever in their deaths. Moreover, Carr displayed all the signs of being an abused partner: Huntley gravitated around women and girls that were impressionable and easily-manipulated, as his relationships with underage girls showed. Neighbours at their first home, before they moved to Soham reported that Huntley barked orders at Carr while he did nothing to help around the house; Carr apparently first realised that Huntley was possibly guilty when he washed a duvet, the first piece of housework he had ever done. She made clear while giving evidence during the trial that one of the reasons she gave an alibi was because she was scared of what he might do if she didn't.

Huntley, now 33, recently claimed he had wanted to confess, but that Carr had slapped him about the face and ordered him to pull himself together before telling him to burn their bodies.

Again, completely untrue. In Huntley's version of events, his "confession" was to involve what he told the trial: that he had accidentally killed the two schoolgirls, a notion he still hangs desperately onto. Huntley is far more of a fantasist and a liar than Carr ever was, and his reliability as a witness is obviously completely discredited.

Since her release four years ago, the British taxpayer has spent around £1million giving her round-the-clock protection from vigilantes. She has lived in 10 safe houses so far.

And just why does she need such protection? It couldn't be because the tabloids have whipped such hate up against her, could it, that completely innocent women have been threatened and thought their lives were in danger because they'd been misidentified as her? Carr was perfect as the next Myra Hindley figure to be brought out whenever it's a slow news day, someone who could have venom directed at her from everywhere because of her role, however slight, in the most heinous and notorious murders of recent times. 1984 had its two minutes of hate; modern-day Britain has its equivalent provided not by the state, directed against a rogue political figure, but rather at a defenceless woman by the press who now emit far more propaganda than any government could ever manage.

Yesterday Winnie Johnson, mother of Moors Murder victim Keith Bennett, said: “Carr was Huntley’s accomplice and she tried to cover up his awful crimes – she is evil too.

The thought of her being allowed to raise and care for a child is hideous. Imagine if Myra Hindley had a baby? Why should we be protecting Maxine Carr anyway?”

See, here's the attempt to build the connection with Hindley. Never mind that Hindley was directly involved in the child murders committed by Ian Brady while Carr could not possibly have been because she wasn't at home at the time, but let's raise the suggestion and then let it do its own work. Johnson deserves nothing but compassion for her plight, but what makes her especially eligible to comment on a completely different case? Why should we be protecting Maxine Carr anyway? I don't honestly know. Perhaps we can remove her anonymity and Channel 4 can base its latest reality show around her. Ten contestants, including 2 celebrities, battle to find Carr and kill her first. The winner gets £100,000 and the admiration of the nation. How about it?

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Taxpayers will be sickened that ordinary families are struggling to pay their taxes so money can be spent on monsters like Maxine Carr.

“It is time we got our priorities right – punishing the innocent with high taxes while subsidising criminals is very twisted logic.”

Speaking as a taxpayer, I'm more than happy that some of my taxes go towards protecting individuals such as Carr from being ripped to pieces by marauding mobs, just as it also goes to protecting anyone and everyone from being ripped to pieces by marauding mobs. I like to think it's what separates me from the degradation and savagery of inhumane cunts like Elliot. Never mind that Carr has long served her sentence and repaid her debt, she's still a criminal, and what's more, a monster. How can we punish the innocent with high taxes while monsters get free money?! It's insane! The second sentence has to be a non sequitur to end all non sequiturs, but then you couldn't ask for much more than from a spokesman for a Tory front that campaigns for a flat tax.

Next up, compare Carr to another murderer:

The most hated woman in Britain reportedly had a miscarriage in summer 2006, when she was at the same stage of pregnancy that she is now. She fears of a backlash against her, in a story that has many parallels with the case of female child-killer Mary Bell.

Again, never mind that Bell actually killed while Carr only provided an alibi, but obviously both are parallel cases because the tabloids wanted both to be exposed so that the vigilantes could do what the courts refused to. How very odd for a newspaper shrieking on its front page about a "rise" in violent crime to be so disgusted by a woman being protected from almost certain death at the hands of people who almost certainly wouldn't be migrants.

Coming from this blog, the next statement is likely to sound heretical, but it's certainly true. The Sun, despite being little more than a propaganda rag for Murdoch's interests which panders to the lowest common denominator, is now almost certainly a far more balanced, even liberal publication than the Express and possibly even than the Mail. Neither of the two aforementioned so-called mid-market papers bother to provide almost anything approaching an alternative voice to that spouted by its columnists and leader columns, as well as the nakedly politically motivated "news" articles. The Sun meanwhile gave space last week when reporting on the "extreme" mosques in Blackburn to both Ed Husain and Ibrahim Master, formerly chairman of the Blackburn council of mosques, both of whom gave different accounts to what you'd usually expect from the paper. (Incidentally, Iraq's deputy president has since clarified his original statement.) Today Richard Hawley comments on the Sun's "crusade" against yob violence, and condemns ASBOs and other punitive measures. That, more than anything else, is an indictment of just how bad things have got in the tabloid press.

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Thursday, December 06, 2007 

Scum-watch: Glorious hypocrisy over Maxine Carr.

The opening word of the second paragraph of today's Scum article on 3 women who were accused of being Maxine Carr is "evil". Rather than the mobs of people who have targeted the women being the ones in the wrong, the tone of the article makes it quite clear that it isn't their fault, nor is it the responsibility of the tabloids who whipped up hate against Carr, of which the Sun was at the forefront, but Carr herself. It's her lies, and her lies only, which have led to the campaigns of hate against the innocent women.

The Sun of course doesn't give the whole background of what Carr was found guilty of or the circumstances surrounding it. The court found her guilty of perverting the course of justice because she gave a false alibi for Huntley, not of the more serious charge of assisting an offender, which she was cleared of. The jury accepted that Carr had been in an abusive relationship, frightened of Huntley and that she had twice provided previous alibis for Huntley because in at least one of those cases he was later found to be innocent. She lied out of self-preservation.

Back in March of this year, the Sun published the contents of a audio cassette featuring Huntley making various claims, including that Carr had far more of a role in the cover-up than the court heard. These claims were nothing new: they were first featured in the News of the Screws in August last year. The Scum however unlike the Screws ran a editorial on it, lambasting Carr and claiming that Huntley had "destroyed any lingering suggestion that girlfriend Maxine Carr was an innocent bystander," and that "Carr will eventually join him there," the there being hell. This was despite the tape also featuring Huntley's continuing fantasy that the deaths of the girls was an accident, never mind that Huntley has been proved to have lied on far more occasions than Carr ever has.

Every time that such claims are made against Carr, those like the three women featured in the Sun's article find themselves under further suspicion and abuse. The irony is that the article will probably do nothing to help them, while if the Sun and others had not printed such vile accusations against Carr and attempted to turn her into the neo-Myra Hindley, they would likely never have to had endure such treatment. Such is the British media. Such is the sheer tabloid chutzpah. Such is the complete refusal to accept they might in some way have a case to answer themselves. If one were being glib, the real evil might be more associated with the press than with the women caught in a continuing tragedy.

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Wednesday, March 28, 2007 

Scum-watch: Reprinting the lies of a murderer.

Ian Huntley is a liar. He has told blatant untruths on multiple occasions, made up an utterly unbelievable story about how he came to murder Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, and is quite clearly still in denial about his own role in their deaths. We already knew all of this. Indeed, last August the News of the Screws printed details from the apparent very same audio cassette which the Sun today reports in more detail.

Why has it decided to apparently reprint this sensationalist, sordid, mendacious garbage today? I have no idea. The Sun however makes far more of Huntley pointing the finger at Maxine Carr than the Screws did last summer. Out of all the Sun editorials I've subjected myself to, I think today's is the most vile that I have ever read:

But in confessing, he has done us all one favour.

He has destroyed any lingering suggestion that girlfriend Maxine Carr was an innocent bystander.

If his version is accurate, she was a cold and calculating accomplice in covering up this hideous crime.


Let's get this into perspective. Carr was charged with perverting the course of justice, which she was found guilty of. She was cleared of two counts of assisting an offender, with the jury believing her claims that she lied because she believed Huntley when he told her that they had been in the house but that he had not killed them.
Carr was cross-examined intensely during the trial, with her barrister pointing out in his summing up that some of it was fiercer than that which Huntley faced.

Carr claimed during her evidence that her relationship with Huntley was one which involved abuse. This claim is given credence by the fact
that Huntley had been in a number of relationships with under-age, impressionable girls. The family of the woman who he was briefly married to claimed that he had beaten her so badly that she miscarried the baby she was carrying. Neighbours from where they first lived reported that he used to bark orders at Carr while he did nothing to help around the house. Carr later mentioned in her evidence that his washing of the duvet which the girls' had bled on was the first time he had ever apparently cleaned or washed anything. This ought to have been the first sign that told her Huntley was lying. She apparently, whether because she genuinely believed that he was not involved, or because she was scared of what might happen if she did accuse him or if she told the police her true concerns, both of which she mentioned in her evidence, decided to ignore this. She may well have believed his denials for another reason: Huntley had twice before been accused of raping other women, with Carr both times giving him an alibi. In one of the cases the victim now believes that Huntley was not the man who raped her.

The picture that Huntley tries to paint of Carr is one of a manipulating, scheming woman, more concerned for herself rather than the girls who had gone missing. This seems utterly at odds with the facts:
Carr was turned down for a permanent job at the Soham school because of how close she had apparently become to the children, especially Holly and Jessica. They were so dismayed that she was leaving that they made her a card and sent her chocolates. It was likely their close relationship to Carr that inadvertently led to their deaths; their stop at Huntley and Carr's home, where they asked for her, was Huntley's opportunity. It's true that Carr had been cheating the benefits system and had lied on job application forms, but this seems to have been an exception. She was seen by those around her as being an ordinary and mostly unremarkable young woman. This, combined with her vulnerability and apparent anorexia was what Huntley homed in on.

I could go on, pointing out how Huntley in the tape claims that Carr supposedly took charge out of fear for losing her job when she had already apparently lost it, how he claims that there was no sexual motive to the deaths despite his predatory history, and how he still maintains that he didn't intentionally kill the girls. The public should make their decision about how involved Carr was in the cover-up keeping in mind the fact that a jury, having heard her give extensive evidence, cleared her of helping an offender, while Huntley is a habitual liar who is still in denial about what really happened that fateful day.


This isn't just about Maxine Carr being disgracefully libeled however. While she herself is being put in further flux by the Sun's republishing of these risible claims, those who are unfortunate enough to bear a resemblance to Carr, however slight, are also being put in danger.
Last September I wrote of the tragedy being inflicted both on her and those who have been accused of being her. Since then, according to Wikipedia, Falmouth police have had to issue a statement that she is not living in the Penryn area.

We can expect a further ramping up of the witch hunt against Carr and those who might be Carr given today's front page treatment of Huntley's trite tape. One of the biggest ironies of the obsession with Huntley and Carr is that every front page splash, every small article, every mention of them only serves to remind the families of Holly and Jessica of their dreadful loss. For a tabloid that claims to want justice, it seems remarkable how they're prepared to put the families of victims through their pain time and time again purely out of their own selfish interest, the very thing that Huntley and the Sun are today accusing Carr of thinking only of. The Sun's editorial concludes:


Her involvement, as described, raises grave doubts about her release and her protection at taxpayers’ expense.

Huntley’s prediction that he will go to Hell will come true one day.

If there is any justice, Carr will eventually join him there.


And if Carr or someone mistaken for her is lynched as a result of the vilification campaign led by the Sun, then Rebekah Wade will already have created a hell here on this septic isle.

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