Saturday 7 July 2012

"It weren't me, guv!" Nick Walkley and Helen Michael

I was quick to believe that Nick Walkley, Barnet council's chief executive, was guilty of dobbing in North Finchley traders spokesperson Helen Michael to Scotland Yard. Were he able to speak about it - he's not? - I think Walkley would plead, "It weren't me, guv!"

Walkley, as returning officer for Barnet, had been responsible for acting on a complaint and first reporting Helen to the local police for not putting contact details on the bottom of her anti-Brian Coleman parking posters. Helen soon rectified that technical error.

Her poster was part of - not all of - the reason for Brian Coleman losing his Greater London Assembly seat in May.

But it seems likely that it is someone else, not Walkley, who has prompted the police - Scotland Yard now! - to take their investigation of Helen further.

Seeing that no rational purpose can be served by pursuing Helen, we can only presume that someone is following a personal agenda here. Now, whose finger-prints are all over this? We might never uncover that mystery but I'm sure we all have our suspicions.

One can lay many 'crimes' at Nick Walkley's door - walking off with £200,000 plus a year of Barnet residents' money in wages, while flogging their services to the private sector is one misdemeanour that, in my view, he should pay heavily for. But persecuting Helen Michael seems not to be among them.

At the 'Barnet council, not for sale!' conference today, the participants debated a motion of solidarity with Helen Michael. Barnet TUC chair Helen Davies said that Helen would be one of the last people she expected to see being leant on for campaigning against the council's crazy policies. Yet that is what is happening.

We unanimously agreed that an injury to one is an injury to all, and pledged to support Helen. Scotland Yard should drop their pointless investigation of her.

14 comments:

David Duff said...

Picking and choosing which laws should be enforced, are you?

daggi said...

You're right. Ms Citizen Barnet should report you for online stalking.

A few hours down the nick for investigation would be fine, even if the accusation turns out to entirely false and just (maybe) a 'misunderstanding' (I can imagine the press release in a few weeks time)?

Whad'ya say?

Citizen Barnet said...

Duff has gone all hang 'em and flog 'em on us. Funny, I had him down as a laissez faire man.

If you want to know just how 'criminal' Helen Michael's offence was, have a read of Roger Tichborne's blogpost on this:
http://barneteye.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/what-electoral-commission-say-about.html

In short, she didn't do much wrong and it could all be sorted out - as it was - without judicial unpleasantness.

I do think some laws are rubbish; there are many laws that are flouted, some that are dead letters, etc. Laws are changed all the time, and the job of the justice system often is to interpret the law - or decide how harshly to apply it or how lenient to be.

Some laws even deserve to be broken... ooh!

David Duff said...

My interest in Ms. Michael's offence, if that it be, is smaller than a Higgs Boson. My interest on your, er, selective approach to the law of the land as passed by a democratic parliament isn't that large, either, but I did just want you to clarify it.

daggi said...

Duffo: come on. If you're interested in the law of the land and democracy in that land, than I hope your interest is slightly bigger than your Higgs Boson, or whatever nickname you're using.

This post from wwwbrokenbarnet.blogspot.co. might even interest you:

Mrs Angry thought that as the nice policemen had taken such efforts to investigate Helen Michael, it would only be polite to return the favour. She did a bit of digging, therefore. Wasn't too difficult.

As Mrs Angry is, despite all appearances, at heart a law abiding and responsible citizen, she will not identify these officers. But one of them left a clue on his email as to his real line of work, and the other has left a trail for all the world to see on the internet, on, oh dear: Linkedin. Note to Scotland Yard: maybe be a bit more discreet. Mrs Angry is actually rather horrified by how easily she has worked this out. Or maybe her detective skills are so highly refined you should offer her a job. Angry of the Yard. Hmm.

These officers would appear to work for SO15, a counter terrorism unit. This investigates terrorism and 'domestic extremism'.

David Duff said...

Daggi, pleae don't think I'm not grateful for your efforts to drag me into this terminally tedious 'kerfuffle' but, alas, your very opening words destroyed such interest as I could muster:

"Mrs. Angry thought"

I have to inform you of my very strong suspicion that Mrs. Angry very rarely thinks about anything. Instead, she indulges in a practice my old Scottish mother described as 'opening your mouth and letting your belly rumble'!

daggi said...

Duffo, I find your comments terminally tedious, but after a time, their tediousness amuses me, as I tend to know what you write before I've got further than "David Duff said..." ("said", not "thought". Tee hee.

David Duff said...

David Duff said ...

(There you are, Daggi the Divine, always glad to be of service!)

daggi said...

It's St. Dagmar The Divine (R.C.) to you, Duffhead, if you don't mind.

David Duff said...

I missed the 'r' off the end of Divine. My bad! I'll hand in my hundred lines on Monday.

St. Dagmar The Divine (R.C.) said...

You'll hand in your hundred lines? You bad. You burn in hell.

David Duff said...

Well at least it'll be warmer than our Summer!

Mrs Angry said...

David Duff ... how have I missed this finest example of your trollery til now?

Mrs Angry thinks very hard, quite a lot of the time. She realises, of course, that in the world of Duff women are not understood to be capable of thinking.

She notes with interest that you have avoided answering the point of the idiotic waste of time spent by a counter terrorist unit pursuing a harmless cafe owner on the pretext of a minor omission on a poster, when we are in the midst of the biggest security panic of all time.

Perhaps you should spend more time thinking, instead of reading lefty blogs & prancing about at home in your longjohns?

David Duff said...

What security panic? I'm not panicking? In fact if someone could manage, without killing anyone, to blow up the entire Olympic boondoggle I would prance about even more joyously in, or possibly out of, my longjohns. If they could manage to include the whole of 'Boring Barnet' in this act of mass destruction, or post-modernist art event, then, frankly, I would give the perps the Freedom of the City!

(Oh God, who's that banging on the door - oh no, it's the anti-terrorism branch - gotta go!)