Owen Meet Beatrix, Beatrix Meet Owen.

The problem with being a rent a quote, ideologue is that you are incapable of learning from your comrades' mistakes:Beatrix Campbell, 2008:

The story of Shannon Matthews' disappearance - and dramatic reappearance, apparently alive and well, today - has confirmed the degree to which class is still the cultural register in our purportedly classless society.

....

Karen Matthews has acted appropriately throughout: she was waiting for Shannon at home; she contacted the police as soon as she had exhausted all the obvious locations. And yet, our eye is drawn to her poverty, numbers of partners, cans of lager going into her household. Everything about Ms Matthews' life has been up for scrutiny.

Owen Jones 2012:

What does it say about modern Britain when the pre-meditated massacre of six children is described as "an accident waiting to happen" on national television? In the early hours of last Friday, someone poured petrol through the letterbox of the Philpott household, unleashing a blaze that ended in one of the most appalling mass murders in our country's recent history. Whoever was responsible must have known the almost inevitable consequences of their actions. No rationalisations exist for this sort of atrocity.

.......

But we rarely see this reality: it is intentionally hidden from us. The Government and much of the media divert anger from those who caused the crisis, to your "scrounging" neighbour down the street. And so we end with Carole Malone arguing that a family whose children died in a fire brought it on themselves. It is beyond shameful. And it must be challenged.

Hey, it's almost as if refusing to draw value judgments about people who live self indulgent and parasitic existences is a flawed way of observing human life and that maybe feckless behaviour is indicative of not being nice people.

Quote Of The Day

Macho, manic productionism relies on force, it valorises conquest of nature and other humans. It marginalises the means of reproduction – how societies sustain themselves, breathe, give birth, grow and rest, clean up; how people take care, give pleasure and co-operate.

Beatrix Campbell OBE yesterday.

I have no idea what she's on about either. That particular passage was found here.

Criminalising Witnesses.

I'm feeling bored and have nothing to write about, I wish there was another incredibly stupid article by Beatrix Campbell OBE to mock.

Hooray!

She applauds a move to punish men who pay for sex with prostitutes who have been coerced, even if they were unaware of the fact. The incidence of trafficking has been vastly and systematically exaggerated as Nick Davies demonstrated last month. Bea dismisses Davies and insists that trafficking is no more of a moral panic than satanic abuse. Or something,

However trafficking does happen on occasion . In fact some Romanian traffickers were convicted this week:

A GANG who trafficked a woman from Romania to work the streets of Manchester as a prostitute has been jailed.

The migrant workers lured their victim - a single mum in her twenties - to the UK after their building work dried up because of the credit crunch.

They promised the woman she could earn money as a dancer but forced her to have sex with up to ten men a night in Manchester's red light districts.

And the case demonstrates the biggest problem with criminalising the users of prostitutes:

She finally escaped their clutches when she appealed to one of her 'punters' and he helped her flee to his house.

Would the 'punter' have helped her if doing so would have ensured that he was charged with a criminal offence?

Bea Does Belfast

Beatrix Campbell OBE, diverts her attention away from uncovering ritual abuse to look at Northern Ireland.

The coverage of the Independent Monitoring Commission's (IMC's) 22nd report on paramilitary activities, vindicates that tradition. Shootings by dissident republican sects at war with both the British and Sinn Féin defined the news. A month ago when US secretary of state Hillary Clinton visited Northern Ireland it was the same story: new threat from republicans. So, is peace in Northern Ireland still threatened by the republicans?

No, says the IMC.

As useless as the IMC are it does seem unlikely that in a year which has seen three murders and several foiled car bombings they would say that there was no threat from republicans. Sure enough on pages 11-14 of the IMC report that she links to it goes into detail about a great number of attacks by the Real IRA. This has been pointed out in the comments of the article by someone.

She continues:

In fact, the Provisional IRA has disarmed and disbanded.

First of all the PIRA has not disbanded, the IMC believes they have disarmed though. Secondly she was talking about "dissident republicans", which are those not in Sinn Fein or the PIRA.

She then indulges in a bit of unsourced allegations:

The sovereign government finally established at Stormont was wrecked not by republicans but Peter Mandelson's undiplomatic and undignified endorsement of a unionist agenda and by MI5's messing about with spooks at Stormont.

Peter Mandelson, whom in most respects I can't stand, was probably the best Northern Ireland secretary since Roy Mason. So who is Campbell referring to when she talks about "the sovereign government" and where is their evidence of this great plot? She doesn't even provide a link that flatly contradicts her claim as she did earlier, evidence is not needed.

Jumping forward a bit Bea adds:

These figures indicate some very worrying trends: loyalist gangsterism is rife, dangerous and productive, and dissident sects have murdered members of the security forces

This is evidence that she is mendacious rather than simply stupid. Reading the sentence is clearly supposed to give the impression that the "dissident sects" who have murdered members of the security forces were loyalist gangsters rather than the republican gangsters who she is trying to airbrush out of the picture.

Is there anyone else who is so consistently wrong about so many issues as Beatrix Campbell?

Witch Finder Returns.

The Witch Finder General, Beatrix Campbell OBE, uses the naming of the killers of Baby P to pursue her favourite hobby horse:

The three decades that span the lifetimes of these perpetrators is the era of the rise and fall of child protection. There has been a revolution in collective consciousness about the abuse and adversity endured by thousands of children. Many survive, sad and struggling, often nobly, to live well, to cause no harm either to themselves or anyone else.

Three decades ago, society gave itself permission to take their side, for its institutions to support them, learn from them, become their champions, honour them. But they didn't. The goodwill towards suffering children that endures residually in communities has been squandered.

Yep, she's again implying that the ritual abuse hoax that she was instrumental in promoting was real, and the reaction against it meant that society was on the side of child abusers. She is rather coy about it though, she knows that she can't come straight out and reaffirm her belief in Satanists conspiracies without being laughed at so instead she merely refers to 'the Cleveland Child Abuse controversy'.

If someone as completely discredited as Beatrix Campbell can still get wheeled out as some kind of expert then what exactly does someone have to do to be classified as a loon?

The School Vetting Affair.

It's the story everyone is talking about-or were talking about yesterday- the decision by Phillip Pullman and other children's authors to refuse to submit to the governments vetting procedure for people who visit schools. I asked some of the leading figures in the debate to explain their positions:

Phillip Pullman, Children’s Author:

I’m sorry whilst I do appreciate that this scheme must apply to the little people, but do you know who I am? As Britain’s leading children’s author I shouldn’t be made to feel that I am being treated like a sex offender, or even worse an ordinary member of the public. It is preposterous and degrading.

We children’s authors should be exempt from the Vetting and Barring scheme, and we should also get a free pass for avoiding airport security and using the bus lane during the rush hour.

Ed Balls, Schools Secretary:

I understand the frustration felt by writers like Mr Pullman, but child safety is the number one priority for this Labour government. In my role as a cabinet minister I visit many schools and have been frankly dismayed at some of the people who hang out near them. At one recent visit to { name of school deleted in order to deter sex offenders} I often see sinister looking men lurking in the corridors with bulging eyes staring who terrify the children. I have since asked for all mirrors to be removed in future.

Beatrix Campbell OBE, Child Protection Expert:

If it is worth letting someone check your body and examine the contents of your bag at an airport, then it is worth letting the computer check whether you've committed crimes against children before you are allowed to attract their attention in their schools.

However as I have previously demonstrated most police officers in Britain are part of a giant conspiracy to abuse children and are likely to allow their fellow satanists off scot free. Therefore we need a more reliable method to ascertain whether unconvicted sex offenders like Mr Pullman are guilty. As we need an objective method that can't be compromised. If Pullman really wants to skulk around in schools then he should register with social services then we can set up a system where he will be tied to a chair and dunked in a lake- it is well known that Satanists float in these circumstances.


Maud Flanders, Cartoon Character:

The Children!!!! Won't someone please think of the children?

Gary Glitter, Musician:

Whilst Philip Pullman rightly raises the inconvenience cause to innocent people like him, the impact of the Vetting Scheme is felt even more strongly by us actual sex offenders. Instead of being able to wonder into schools to talk to/ molest the children we now have do so outside of school premises.

Julie Bindel, Lunatic:

The voices protecting someone like Pullman who I am not accusing of any crime are louder than those that speak up for his victims. Philip Pullman may not have been caught and convicted molesting any children yet but lets not be complacent. Unfortunately the legal system is set up to protect and perpetuate male violence so we can't simply ban all men from going within 100 metres of children.

Surprisingly I live at home with my cat, who has to wear a bell on her collar so that she can't sneak up on any birds or rodents, is it really too much to demand that men be required to wear these bells too. Are children less important than sparrows?

Mainstreaming Loonies.

I don't want to go on about Beatrix Campbell OBE, but I really do find her an extraordinary figure. By rights someone who has spent decades promoting absurd conspiracy theories about satanic ritual abuse ought to be an obscure and marginal figure. Her views on almost every single subject are laughable and usually motivated entirely by extreme political ideology with little connection to reality. Her Marxism is ridiculous enough but at least that's a 20th century superstition whereas her witch hunting is utterly medieval.

Yet instead of being looked at as a David Icke type figure, she is treated with the utmost seriousness by the powers that be, as her OBE demonstrates. She is for example a member of the "Women's National Commission", a quango set up by the government a few months ago which is "the official and independent advisory body giving the views of women to the government of the United Kingdom." Right.

There are a number of reactions this raises, firstly why are the government still funding quangos when WE HAVE NO FUCKING MONEY. Seriously stop wasting our money on providing sinecures to political fellow travellers. A large proportion of the WNC's members are associated with the Labour Party or organisations to the left of Labour so I'm not sure what right they have to claim to be giving 'the views of women'. I don't know if any of the other members have been involved in anything as despicable as Campbell's attempts to destroy innocent people with ridiculous allegations but they are plainly not representative of anyone but themselves.

The government's agenda on 'equality' is directed by Harriet Harman who appoints a bunch of people with identical views to her own to an 'independent' quango to advise the government. This is more dangerous now than it would have been before the economy collapsed because the government's scope for effecting radical policies is going to be limited to areas that don't involve immediate spending increases. There is also an argument that hanging around wih people of similar views tends to push people to even greater fanaticism which considering the starting point for Bea Campbell is alarming.

Witch Finder General Denounces Witch Hunts.

Exposing hypocrisy by Beatrix Campbell OBE is easy but is worth doing anyway. Today she writes:

When David Cameron says "sorry" for the witch-hunting section 28 passed by the vengeful Tories in 1988

Now if there is one person who shouldn't be accusing others of 'witch hunting' it is surely Beatrix Campbell. Witch hunting is often used as a metaphor, as Campbell uses it here or as when it was to describe the McCarthyite anti communist accusations. However Bea Campbell wasn't simply involved in metaphorical witch hunts, she literally claimed to be uncovering conspiracies of people carrying out ritualistic abuse in order to please Satan!

Satanic Cover Up Ongoing, So It Seems.

Beatrix Campbell spent the 1980s and 90s promoting the now discredited fantasies of 'satanic abuse' that culminated in the breaking up of many families in Cleveland, Orkney and else where. He writings really were quite incredible:

'Within two weeks of the first published report of the first discovery of alleged satanic abuse in Britain, an organisation of satanists circulated chief constables, directors, of social services and the Home Office with reports that tried to undermine the credibility of the care workers involved in the case . And they have responded similarly to subsequent controversies.'

Amazingly in some circles she is still considered to be a serious commentator on child abuse. Today she writes about the scandal of the systematic abuse by the catholic church in Ireland, Irish Republicanism is another of her causes so naturally a scandal in which the crucial factor appears to have been the entwined relationship between the Irish state and the Catholic church* has to reflect badly on Britain:

In Britain, by contrast, the child protection system has tottered from crisis to crisis. The UK story began with a child's terrible life and death, in conditions that echo the case of Baby P. Louis Blom-Cooper's inquiry into the 1984 death of Jasmine Beckford transformed children's services: the state took the side of children; social work became an enlightened, empathetic and empowered profession. British paediatricians made world-class discoveries about the hazardous lives of children whose bodies told stories, of intrusion and cruelty that had been, until then, literally unspeakable.

Child protection was then no longer a clerical function of the "cruelty man", it became a subtle child-centred project. But the system could not withstand the resistance of accused adults and their advocates, nor could it cope with the unsettling evidence of scale. While Ireland was taking testimony from survivors, Britain was disdaining them, blaming them for making up all sorts of nonsense.

Actually Britain blamed fanatics like Bea Campbell for promoting silly ideas and incompetent psychologists and social workers for subjecting young children to ludicrous interrogations where they were forced to confess to being abused. I won't comment on the part I bolded, but if anyone else wants to have their say, feel free.

She isn't explicit in the article about what she is referring to, so readers who are unaware of her history won't know that she is still implying that the satanic abuse claims she promoted are true.

* See the comments by Irish senator and journalist, Eoghan Harris, here:

“However, as one born and reared as a Roman Catholic, I ask is there something in the religion of my childhood that allowed this systemic abuse.”

At first glance. It would appear that there was. In Northern Ireland, institutional abuse of Protestant children was very rare, apart from the Kincora incident, and almost unknown in Roman Catholic institutions.

“There is not something inherently bad about Roman Catholicism but there is clearly something inherently bad about Roman Catholicism’s relationship with the Irish Republic.

“Under British rule, these abuses were not practised in Roman Catholic institutions and Protestants did not practise them. The responsibility belongs to the Republic as a whole.”

The Catholic Church in Ireland is a cross border body, so any differences between how it behaved north and south of the border have to be explained in terms of the political entities.

Bea-ing Ridiculous. (Updated)

If there is one characteristic that I particularly envy among professional columnists is their uncanny judge of character, honest. After the conviction of Karen Matthews for the abduction of her daughter Shannon it seems like a good time to revisit Bea Campbell's class war column on the subject from earlier this year:

Karen Matthews has acted appropriately throughout: she was waiting for Shannon at home; she contacted the police as soon as she had exhausted all the obvious locations.

Apart from with the bloke she gave her to.

And yet, our eye is drawn to her poverty, numbers of partners, cans of lager going into her household. Everything about Ms Matthews' life has been up for scrutiny.

This appears to have been quite astute.

Karen Matthews has been subjected to a Today programme interrogation that appeared to position the mother as the perpetrator: Sarah Montague asked her seven times about her lifestyle. Her patronising preoccupation was how many men there have been in her life, not her judgment about them. Has any other, apparently blameless mother been so sweetly assailed?

Sarah Montague 1, Bea Campbell 0.

{the McCann's} resources - money, looks, religion, organisation, focus (all a function of class) - were all mobilised to protect them and to obscure the question of culpability. It was the McCann's photo-opportunity with the Pope that eventually exposed the campaign to criticism as inappropriate, not to say unseemly.

Unseemly!?

No one thought Karen Matthews had abducted or killed her daughter - and yet she has been judged. Some commentators think they can say anything they like about this woman and even to her. She has spoken with reticent dignity, yet her class makes her available for blame.

Nope her obvious unsuitability as a parent appalled most people, who kept their silence because of the awful situation they believed that she was in.


Update: Most spectacular volte face ever? (Via Marcus at Harry's Place and Julia)