Honestly, this whole cozy British police – public relations – government revolving door of corrupted process, collusion, coverups, and conflicting interests is almost like a conspiracy theorist’s dream of a secret cabal of controlling elites.

And yet it’s not as bad living in London Town and disagreeing with the official line as it was in Moscow in the days of Comrade Lysenko and his pal Jo Stalin, at a time Philby and co were doing all they could to help from outside. Put another way, we have a fighting chance, just as we did despite all the disastrous mistakes of the “old boy network” in bygone eras.

If there’s one article I’d recommend reading to get a balanced view of this crisis it would be John Harris on 18 July, entitled “How the phone-hacking scandal unmasked the British power elite”. This in particular I appreciated and agreed with, coming from a Guardian writer:

When he decisively began to exercise his grip on British politics in the 1980s, Murdoch was an intimate of Margaret Thatcher, who cleared the way for his move into British television, though to claim that she was under his spell was deeply misplaced.

Outstanding leadership means never coming under the spell of such a person, how dynamic and useful they may be to your tactical plans. We need more of the same. Never rule out what it can achieve.

If this were the case, it would mean that someone close to UEA or the Norfolk Constabulary would have had to know of Mr Wallis and of his ‘specialty’ and be in a position to engage his firm or recommend him to someone who would.

Now we hear of Mr Hayman, who could well have been in the right places at the right times to make those connections.

Only guesswork, of course, but things do get curiouser and curiouser.

Thanks for correction. Lagomorph.

John

——–

Anthony,

I suspect that was an intentional mispelling of the lagomorph. Heh?

John

Why are these payments not on the general ledger?

CRU/UEA, to the best of my recollection, has not been in the habit of going above and beyond the call of duty when responding to FOI requests! I could be wrong (it has been known to happen!), but
I believe that the GL entries disclosed to Bishop Hill were limited to those which pertained to that which he had specifically mentioned in his request.

IMHO, it would not be unreasonable to assume that any contract(s) with and payment(s) to OO would be more likely to show up on the books of UEA’s “Communications Office“:

The Communications Office is a service for the media and for our University colleagues who wish to publicise their work or produce their own publications. [...] We are responsible for media relations, internal communications and official university publications.

GE Canada was shut down as a result

Not that I disbelieve you, but assuming that “GE Canada” = “General Electric Canada”, my family had a very dear friend (who passed away a few years ago) who, prior to retirement, worked for GE – and was quite active at his local church. So I’d like to be able to fwd this info.

Interestingly, on the CoI front, my father (who for a time worked for Westinghouse) was required to (and did) disclose any and all contacts he had with this family friend.

And, on a more humourous (but somewhat related) note … back in the days when computers made their debut in the industrial workplace, I recall my father telling the story of a visit to our friend’s office. Our friend was showing off his computer; but some programmer had arranged things in such a way that regardless of what our friend did, all that displayed on his monitor was “Back to work xxxxx, back to work xxxxx”