friday foil hat (or, no more police procedural dramas for you)
There's something odd about this morning's Today programme interview between John Humphries and Phil Woolas, about the arrest of shadow Home Office minister Damian Green.
Woolas repeatedly returns to the phrasing of the charges - "suspicion of conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office" and "aiding and abetting, counselling or procuring misconduct in a public office." He seems to make careful effort to distinguish between simple leaks (which grease the process of daily politics) and the charge of conspiracy.
Humphries eventually asks him why he keeps repeating that language and goes on to ask what he's implying. Woolas says he's not implying anything, while arguing that the case isn't as straightforward as it would seem.
You can listen to the interview here for the next 24 hrs or so - it's the 8.30am segment.
Adjusting my deluxe foil hat - and allowing that Woolas may just be inarticulate - does the language of conspiracy and "aiding and abetting" not suggest more than one person? Are we waiting for the other shoe to drop?
Other weirdness: David Cameron and Boris Johnson are informed of the police action, but no government minister?
1 comments:
Like yourself the weasel words of Woolas jarred as I toiled on the rowing machine at the gym.
It appears that a Home Office civil servant was arrested for passing unauthorised information ...taking 2 to tango, one assumes that Green was the target recipient in the case.
Hence the insistence that a conspiracy was afoot.
Especially as the leak was to a politician and not say a more neutral (?) member of the Press.
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