Lord McAlpine: RIP

Something tells Fagburn we haven'd heard the last about this man...
#innocentface #etcetc

Thought For The Day: Peter Wilby

Child abuse is a reality and, in the past, the full extent of it was often swept under the carpet. The guilty still at liberty far outnumber the innocent behind bars. In nearly all the instances I list above, children were abused, sometimes in large numbers. They suffered terrible trauma, and the effects were often lifelong. To point out that journalists – along with politicians and professionals such as social workers – strayed into wild fantasies is not to defend or trivialise abuse. Nor does questioning some convictions denote "support" for paedophilia, any more than questioning the Birmingham Six convictions denoted "support" for IRA bombers.

The great media analyst Peter Wilby, writing for The Guardian.

You may wish to compare and contrast it with this Independent piece by Owen Jones - again, someone who really should know better, much better - which reads like an exercise in hysterical, sanctimonious, point-missing and point-scoring.
And it is as silly as it is grotesque to suggest that merely pointing out that Steve Messham has withdrawn his allegation against Lord McAlpine is somehow to condone or enable the sexual abuse of children.
Let us pray to the great god Pan that Owen doesn't let his new-found fame, fame, fatal fame turn him into another Johann Hari.
We need him. 

PS Mail Online has managed to turn this sorry tale into 12 BBC-bashing articles today. Ironically, without the "news" about Newsnight and BBC News this seems to be quite a slow news day.

Update: 'Is Tom Watson in danger of fuelling a paedophile panic?' Nelson Jones, New Statesman.
Answer: Yes.

Update 2: "Days after allegations of sexual misconduct were made against Elmo puppeteer Kevin Clash, they have been withdrawn - the claimant recanting his story..." The Independent.
No comment from Owen on this, yet. 

David Cameron: The Last Word/s

Felt so angry about all this mass hysteria and the misreporting - and about the torrent of pious victimist Twitter crap last night - I wrote this.

PS It increasingly looks like the "apparent fantasist" is a fantasist.
Who knew?
Apart from anyone with a brain.

In conclusion: Things aren't necessarily true just cause you want them to be, and sometimes people lie (even about things that may, in essence, be true)...

Update: To clarify, Tom Watson has said his allegations are about another top Tory secret paedophile ring...

Tom Watson: The Thick Plottens

Tom Watson MP will use parliamentary privilege tomorrow to literally blow the lid off one of the greatest parliamentary cover-ups of our time.
Fagburn can exclusively reveal that he will sensationally name names - many of them household names - involved in a secret gay Tory paedo ring that goes to the very heart of the so-called British establishment.
Mr Watson will say Edward Heath shot Jeremy Thorpe's great dane - and secret canine lover - Rinka in 1975 because he was about to expose how Harold Wilson was paid millions in Kremlin gold for gay sexual favours to Russian premier, Leonid Brezhnev, during a fake moon landing on a grassy knoll witnessed by Lord McAlpine, Lord Lucan, Sir Jimmy Savile, Norman St John Stevas, and Diana, the Princess Of Wales.
Long rumoured on the internet, the plot is known to conspiracy theorists as the 'Tom Watson Has Completely Lost The Plot Plot'.
Tom Watson, last seen wearing a hat made of tinfoil and polishing his massive ego, told Fagburn; "If I lose all my credibility after this, I blame dark forces about which we know little. Wibble."

Update: If Watson ever does name names, instead of hint-hint you might want to compare and contrast his allegations with this new piece by David Icke, that draws in Heath, Savile, Wilson, McAlpine, Mountbatten, Wilson, Diana... You couldn't make it up etc etc.