Wardman Wire Magazine

Amongst all the excitement and speculation about the story, there was an interesting and sober conversation about the possible legal and constitutional implications of the arrest of Damian Green MP and the process of the search of his House of Commons office on the Insite Law Magazine podcast:

Today I am talking to Carl Gardner, a barrister, ex government lawyer and author of The Head of Legal blog about the extraordinary arrest by Police of shadow frontbench spokesman on Immigration, Damien Green MP.

Click through on the title to listen.

Click through on the title for all the papers.

Front Page Images here and on the Front Page are Courtesy of Sky News.

First of all, let me set the context for this series of posts.

I have covered the rundown of the bookshop chain that used to be known as SPCK over several months. An earlier post covered a story of some leaked correspondence from the time when the management of the bookshop at Durham Cathedral was transferred from the Society of Saint Stephen the Great (SSGCT) to the newly created company “Durham Cathedral Shop Management Limited” (DCSML), which showed a brutal approach to the management of unpaid suppliers to the previous management company SSGCT.

This article is about a debt of almost £100,000 ($165,000+) built up over a mere three month period owed to the new company DCSHL by SSGCT after the new company took over on March 11th 2008, and before J Mark Brewer attempted to put SSGCT into Bankruptcy in Texas on 19 June 2008 (that is the date when the “Statement of Financial Affairs” was filed).

I also take a detailed look at a series of payments comprising well over half a million dollars taken out of the SSGCT organisation during a period of 12 months and paid to J Mark Brewer’s legal firm or to him personally, or to the “Orthodox Christian Mission Fund” of which he is listed as the Trustee.

I need to attach a strong note here that the SPCK mission society who used to be associated with the bookshop chain which includes the Durham Cathedral Bookshop is no longer involved in any way, and that Durham Cathedral are the landlord and not responsible for the management of the Durham Cathedral Bookshop. Nothing in this article reflects on either Durham Cathedral or SPCK.

I should also say that there are a lot of numbers in this post, and I will be pleased to correct any mistakes.

Via Damian Thompson’s Holy Smoke blog, a report of a plan by Scientologists to swoop on Mumbai with their “educational booklets”, as previously happened after the New York World Trade Centre attacks after 9/11, in London after the Bus and Underground Bombs on 7/7 in 2005, at Virginia Tech after the shootings and on other occasions.

He has confirmed the existence of a plan to despatch of Scientology Booklets with the headquarters of ABLE UK. ABLE UK is a Scientology front organisation, Association for Better Living and Education:

I can confirm that. I’ve just rung ABLE UK at Saint Hill Manor, the Scientology HQ, to be told that Hubbard booklets are being rushed out “in order to pour oil on troubled water”. I think I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

I don’t usually post Public Relations Flyers, but this is rather a good idea.

I should note that the invention of the Bloody Mary Cocktail in 1933 is only one version of the history. The PR flyer says:

The drink which is an American institution originated in Manhattan by a famous French bartender named Ferdinand Petiot when he came here in 1933.

While Wikipedia says:

Petiot invented the drink in 1920 while working at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris, France, a frequent hangout for Ernest Hemingway and other American expatriates.

To put it another way, the Bloody Mary may be another U-571 (i.e., Yanks rewriting history :-), but - in any case - free Bloody Marys are worth having.

Last week I posted about the plight of Durham Cathedral Bookshop.

Today there is an article about it in the Northern Echo Newspaper. The article features the petition we started a few weeks ago, which now has more than 300 signatures.

I’m not going to cover the Mumbai Massacre in detail as news as it’s being far better virtually everywhere else, but one thing I do wonder: I’m not sure why I’m seeing apparently live pictures of an assault to free hostages on satellite TV.

Even back in 1982, at the Iranian Embassy siege in London, there were concerns that the gunmen would be able to see the detail of the assault coming due to live TV coverage, and the actual assault was over in minutes:

However news teams were camped outside the embassy. A unit from the British news organisation ITN, using recently-introduced ENG camera equipment, managed to establish a viewpoint at the rear of the embassy. It was images from this vantage point that showed the SAS raid on the building live on television after their correspondent had been ‘tipped off’. However the SAS insisted on a short time-delay between the live events and their broadcast in case the terrorists were watching the broadcasts.

Clearly the situation is massively different due to the larger scale and continuing nature of the attack, but it’s one of the things that I’d like to know about. One possibility is that there is a delay introduced - but I will be interested to hear the detail.

Or are any casualties that result part of the collateral damage of the “continuous” and “instant” news reporting?

Sky even have a Live Blog of it all.