Christmas Books

Flectere si nequeo superos

Acheronta movebo

 

The Bureau's Selection of Seasonal Literary Treats

 

Safe in Those Hands

Rewilding by David Edgar

Arnold Lane Books, 325 pages

 

Honey Potts writes: In this superb  account of his struggles to put us back in touch with our earth  Mr Edgar takes us from his beginnings as a self-taught sheep strangler in the suburbs of  Londonderry to his creation of the Algarve Wilderness Project in Portugal.

Dave took what was once a  patchwork quilt of golf courses, Disneyland package holiday resorts for NHS workers who want to “eat English” when abroad,  football grounds  and rock venues – the whole earth-insulting and unsustainable environment that threatens our universe –and transformed it unutterably.

With the financial backing  of the Expunge Foundation and George  Monbiot Edgar has gradually turned it into what it was ten thousand years ago, a savage but beautiful jungle of dense forests and banana swamp peopled by imported indigenes who terrify those who dare to take their pictures.

As  Monbiot has said, at least we have the chance of a new beginning. Teething troubles? Yes, a few. Sometimes people are held underground for years before being ransomed and the occasional ritual consumption of abducted  infants in chili-flavoured olive oil and vine leaves  has aroused disquiet in the right-wing press but we should still all be grateful to  Mr Edgar.  The planet and  the climate demand it. 

Honey Potts is a Guardian and Times Literary Supplement journalist. She is the author of  How My Vagina Will Begin World War III

Not As Nice As He Looks

Catyrisi Exfolia by Brigham Home Young

Oxford University Press, 725 pages, 231 diagrams.

 

John Terry writes: A dry title for a thrilling book!  Very similar to the best-selling The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, leather-dressed biker-neurologist-with-a-permanent-erection  Oliver Sach’s medical masterpiece, this is a revelation.

Professor Home Young’s subject is initially unpromising: a study of how peoples’ hair can turn grey or white and the psychological and physical factors that might come into play in the transformation.

For years his work was routine and unsung but then he stumbled on a genuine oddity – a person whose hair and head had turned not grey but salmon pink! What, wondered the professor, could have explained such a radical mutation? We won’t give any spoilers but the professor’s study of his subject is a gripping one as, year by year, he began to uncover the terrifying way in which an otherwise extremely ordinary man was gradually taken over by  toxins which proceeded to eat him away from within, like someone harbouring a voracious eight foot long tapeworm coiled just above his anus.

There are few light moments in this compulsive but harrowing tale. The extraordinary poisonous and explosive flatulence  which accompanied the condition and which had been known to set off fire alarms in television studios  - the affliction was measured at 81.5 decibels by the professor’s team, all of whom had to be paid overtime rates and provided with oxygen masks  – is too unpleasant to be funny, especially when Professor Home Young’s registrar insists that “it was the subject’s true personality showing at last”.  The question - perhaps the question in life - remains teasingly unanswered: are our fates, as well as our appearances,  decided by physical ailments or spiritual sepsis?

 

Oliver Sachs's reputation was posthumously dented by the discovery that he had cared for and studied his patients while under the influence of vast amounts of Crystal Meth.  In this case it is the patient, particularly in the illustrations - not for the faint-hearted - who reminds one of a bad case of the meth bugs.

John Terry writes about football for Stig Unable, editor of the Times Literary Supplement, and is the author of  Insights of the Endoscope.

 

Test Your Skills!

I Am Telling the Truth by Kate McCann

Munchausen & Aesop, 144 pages, 50 game cards. 

Sorry, your search in images for Kate McCann Telling the Truth returned no results

Geordie Grieg writes: One for the foot of the Xmas tree, this is, a quite superb games book - forget charades! After all the scoffing  on the 25th, flop down, tighten the paper hats, sip the remnants of  the 1991 Chateau Carla-Spayed and begin! Each player has to be Kate McCann telling others  how to get to their Cretan holiday hotel from various country crossroads. Since all Cretans are liars the rest of the group has to trap her into telling the truth by various stratagems suggested by the cards, since she is programmed only to give false answers. Bores reveal  themselves, there are deliberate cheating cards, tempers rise and family stresses start to bite along with the alcohol. Tears flow. Partners separate. But it all gets patched up in the end. Gerry McCann remains silent. Wonderful!

Geordie Grieg is an editor who writes about philosophy for the Times Literary Supplement under and sometimes over Stig Unable. He is the author of You Too Can Become a Gent Like I Am.

Post-Modernism

 

This Is My Truth by Kate McCann

Limited Edition of 400 copies. Signed with a Bic biro on the Recto by Kate McCann. Printed on Arches paper and linen bound. £17 200 per copy. Any sales receipts money left over may be given to a charity or fund such as the Ex-Prisoners' Association.  

Sorry, your search in non-fiction for This is my Truth by Kate McCann produced no results. Hint: try “fiction” or “fantasy” or "business" instead.  

Jon Jones writes: One for the adult stocking,  not the tree: it's a beautifully bound little piece of Duchamps-lite irony for your more culturally knowing guests and the metro-cognoscenti, with the back cover carrying Bauhaus-styled mini-text recommendations by a host of faux-celebrities, from Gordon Brown to oh-so-delicious - especially with a beard - icon David Beckham. Achingly hip!

Inside are 148 beautifully blank pages.

What statement is it making? Who knows and who cares - does it matter? Just buy it and put it on the very top of your tree which this year, Nicky Haslam tells me, must not be the  anti-leafdrop  type. So common.

Screaming Jay Jones is chief arts bullshit writer for a national daily and Provocateur of the Times Literary Supplement's Cultural Studies section. He is the author of  If I Lose Weight  Will They Listen To Me?

Innocence Achieved

Heartbroken by   “John Smith”.  

Vatican House Books, 128 pages.

John Blacksmith writes: Xmas defines books like this, a charming little tale rather like St Exupury’s twentieth century classic The Little Prince, delicate, deep and profound with an abiding sense of the dignity of humanity and a willingness to accept life’s mysteries. Beyond lies redemption and, with it, a glorious belief in other human beings.

The hero’s family background remains a mystery but in  Smith's disarmingly simple, if somewhat colourless, prose he grows up in the classic  Dickens-redemptionist manner, into a whizz doctor. But the more successful he is the more he thinks that there may be something, an intangible presence, missing from his life. For two  decades he works frantically and devotedly in a windowless hospital room, dwarfed by banks of advanced cardiac monitoring equipment and screens, struggling to answer his Ultimate Question – does he possess a human heart?    

He can’t find it.

Then, one day, a mysterious Christmas figure appears beside him while he is urinating with his usual relentless determination.  The hairs on the back of his neck prickle. He feels a presence. It is a revelation.  “My son,” says the white-bearded but strangely blue-eyed figure, in soft, rolling, curiously reassuring tones, “you will never find if you have a  heart this way. You must take a different path. Shake yourself off and go now in peace.” And he was gone.

 

So The Doctor sought within himself and located new sources of energy, belief and, after years of struggle, understanding. From then on Christmas became a pleasure, an adventure in comprehending your deeper self and the needs of others.

Finally he  went on radio and talked of bringing hope to others, of the prospect of redemption, of the value of those beyond yourself, of the role that poetry plays in life, of the renewed importance of human tolerance and of how, with the snow falling in soft waves outside the frosty studio window and the chimney-smoke from the houses nearby curling upwards  and the Salvation Army playing a mournful yet profound  God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen on the pavement below, he told us all of how he hadn’t yet found his heart but, given time, he’d find that fucking thing whatever anyone says, the arseholes. Arseholes!

John Blacksmith is a pretentious failure.

_________________________________

 

That lot will fill you with cheer, won't it? We want to wish all regular readers a Happy Christmas and a great New Year. 

 

From the wonderful people who brought you...

 Gerry McCann's Blogs

 

Gerry McCann: September 3 2007

 

After dropping the twins off Kate and I popped into church for 10 minutes to pray for Madeleine. Spent most of the day going through
mail, e-mails and I had a number of calls to make. It was good to
spend some time with my family and Sean and Amelie certainly enjoyed their auntie’s dinner- sometimes it is hard to beat mince and ‘tatties’!

 

Kate McCann: September 3 2007

 

I dropped my head in my hands in utter disbelief. I began to shake and cry. I shouted at Ricardo, ‘What are you doing? Why are you doing this? I can’t believe what’s going on! This is ridiculous. It’s despicable.’ I shook my head over and over again. ‘This can’t be happening. This just cannot be true!’Trisha and Eileen were staying with us for what was intended to be our final week in Luz. Hearing the commotion from the next room, where they were playing with Sean and Amelie, they came running in demanding to know what was happening. Within seconds there were more tears and more shouts of dismay and disbelief.

 

Gerry McCann October 1 2007  

"I am still amazed at the irresponsible reporting going on in the press with unsubstantiated reports from unreliable sources being repeated in the UK and Portuguese press unquestioningly."

_____________________________________

Gerry McCann's Newsfeeds

 2018, The Mail, November 25 - Part of the original newsfeed 

 

"The British and Portuguese efforts to find out what happened to the toddler are being carried out separately - but the two are believed to have met to discuss the theory.

 

A spokesman for Portugal's Attorney General's Office refused to comment, but a well-placed source said: 'The heads of the two police investigations are corresponding with each other directly and have combined their efforts without resorting to rogatory letters like before.

 

A meeting took place recently at the HQ of the General Attorney's Office in Portugal, which was attended by the prosecutor from Portimao who is in charge of the Portuguese inquiry. One of the lines of investigation that continues to be pursued is that the child could have walked out of the holiday flat herself.'"

 

So the story goes:

 

1) Mitchell/McCann claim  "woke and wandered" is a current Portuguese line  of investigation. 

2) Mitchell/McCann suggest that it was discussed at a high-powered meeting in  the Portuguese AG's office.     

3) Attorney-General's office refused to confirm the story.  

2018 Metro, (part of Mail group) 27 November 

"A spokesman for Portugal’s Attorney General’s Office confirmed the investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance – which is being conducted separately to Operation Grange – is ‘ongoing’ and benefitting from the same bilateral cooperation as before. She [the spokesman] said: ‘The Portuguese judicial authorities do not comment on the lines of investigation that are being pursued by the British authorities.’

 

But the source [read those three words again carefully]: said: ‘The heads of the two police investigations are corresponding with each other directly and have combined their efforts without resorting to rogatory letters like before. A meeting took place recently at the HQ of the General Attorney’s Office in Portugal, which was attended by the prosecutor from Portimao who is in charge of the Portuguese inquiry. One of the lines of investigation that continues to be pursued is that the child could have walked out of the holiday flat herself.’"

 

1) Mitchell/McCann now claim a spokesperson for the AG's office confirmed the meeting with the prosecutor.

2) Mitchell/McCann now claim  the same spokesperson for the AG's office - "But the source" - confirmed that "woke and wondered" is a current line of investigation.   

3) Mitchell/McCann imply, in all the feeds, that the Yard and PJ investigations are operationally divergent.

The Bureau has missed this official statement by the Attorney-General's office spokesperson.

 

Amid all the fibbing in the feeds, all the non-existent "rejection" of the "woke and wandered" theory and all the other junk, the pearl at the centre of the mush  remains:

 

1) The police did not come to the McCanns' family home to discuss funding, despite the earlier feeds designed to suggest that was the reason.

2) They came to tell the McCanns officially that "the investigations" are pursuing leads that do not involve any form of abduction of Madeleine McCann from the apartment.

 

The McCann response has been desperate defensive spin unseen since 2007/8. But they haven't denied those central facts. They can't.

 

__________________________________________________________________________________

 

The Acid Tears Of Time

That strange,  inexplicable and utterly sublime masterpiece Astral Weeks is fifty years old today

 

 

"Ain't nothing but a stranger in this world..."

 

Reminding us that truth, beauty  and art in the end outlive dishonesty, lies and greed

 ___________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

Abduction Gone - continued

Flectere si nequeo superos

Acheronta movebo

 

 



MADELEINE 'INSULT'

Kate and Gerry McCann hit back at claims Madeleine woke up and left the apartment.

________________________________________________

 

They haven't. Not a word. Not a single word.

The "hitting back" consists of  some dodgy blah-blah from Mitchell and quotes from - guess what? - the seven year old book Madeleine.  

There is not the slightest doubt that the stories supposedly from Portugal, the ones that a "family source" - oh, how tired and old these gambits are - claims the McCanns are "hitting back" against, are pure McCann stories, fed by the pair themselves.

Ask yourself - who else could it have been? Neither the Portuguese nor British police have ever used UK multiple feeds in this way in the McCann case. For the PJ it is literally impossible, because they don't have either the authorization or the contacts in Britain's media, or the trust from British editors, to get away with it; Grange has always used its own website or open media conferences followed by journalists' questions to provide background information. And for either party to try and do so would risk exposure that could only benefit the McCanns.

Who else? Goncalo's people? Not a chance. Again, they don't have the contacts and know from the past that the UK media scum would double-cross GA while pretending support, just as the Mail did years ago. There isn't anyone else with a stake in the case and a history of newsfeeds about it. Except, of course, the original conspirators, the MSM itself, which conspired with the McCanns to invent and sell the abduction story and wreck the Portuguese investigation. But they don't do feeds - they just carry them.

Who has the information to leak? Well, the McCanns are always telling us how the Yard keep them updated, aren't they? And they even had a friendly visit the other day to spell some things out. And the Portuguese public ministry and the UK ministry of justice are not so tightly bound to secrecy as both police squads. No, the Portuguese source angle is simply a tired Mitchell/McCann attempt to get round the Yard ban on their media interference.

So in  case anyone is in any doubt we aren't quoting newspapers or their bullshit as sources: we don't care what the disgusting MSM, BBC included, say or think: we're repeating what the McCanns are telling us. That is, what the McCanns want us, the public, to believe for now. Whether you believe us or not is your decision but we can promise you the Bureau is being a great deal more truthful than the erstwhile conspirators and their successors, the  MSM.

What evidence   has prompted this desperate pre-emptive stuff we don't yet know. Except that it's concrete, a threat to the couple's credibility  and involves the 100% police discounting of the abductor claim. And that, since the Rothley meeting, it's finding its way out.

We wrote this month  that the McCanns kept up the pretence that they were "co-operating with the police" in 2007 until the gains of doing so were outweighed by the constraints - that is, once the PJ turned up on August 2 with a search warrant and accusations. Soon afterwards the couple engaged a criminal lawyer and a few weeks after that they were in flight to the UK.

History is repeating itself.  We said yesterday that the McCanns  described the Yard presence in Rothley  in eerily similar terms to the pack of lies they gave us all about August 2 2007, with the identical underlying message - whatever they came to talk about it wasn't, it reely, truly wasn't, bad news for us. Promise. Not at all.

As Kate McCann famously wrote in Madeleine, "we felt we didn't have a choice".

And that's how they feel now.




  

Abduction is Dead - Team McCann

 

Flectere si nequeo superos

Acheronta movebo

 

 

Act Three, continued

So we have a further set of  newsfeeds directly from the McCanns - Sun, Mirror, Express, Mail, all fed and synchronised during the night of the 24th November.

 

It may be that  not everyone has thought about the implications.

 

The same feeds team has only just finished telling us  that Scotland Yard officers had made a recent "visit"  to their  Rothley home. True. And why were they there? They told us that too.

 

If you read the Bureau regularly you'll know that the same people, the  McCanns, used almost the same words to describe that Rothley visit  as they  did eleven years ago when they described a "visit" by the PJ to their  Praia da Luz apartment.  The one when Gerry McCann had a "virus". The one where they somehow forgot to tell us the police carried, among other things, a search warrant.

 

After eleven years nothing whatever has changed: they want you to hear their version before the real ones emerge.

 

By pure  co-incidence this chat with those nice people from the Yard has been followed  by "a meeting" at the Portuguese ministry of justice attended by the prosecutor in the case.

 

Quite a lot happening behind the feeds, isn't there?  

Gone! 

And now for the message that matters. For the very first time since 2007 the UK press is carrying stories meaning that no abduction ever took place. No threats to sue from the McCanns, no outrage, no appearance by Tony Parsons or David Baddiel screaming  of malicious sardine-eating rumours.  Nope, the parents  put the story out themselves.

 

"'Hinting both forces [our italics] may have gone cold on the idea the youngster had been the victim of a botched burglary or a paedophile who had forced entry to snatch her," the insider said: "'The theory that Madeleine left the flat of her own accord to go looking for her parents is not something that hasn't been discussed before.'"

 

Forget any contempt or outrage or mystification. Forget, even, about the dogs. None of that matters for now: what matters is that  "woke and wandered" is not compatible in any way with an abductor. It has to mean that nobody was standing outside the window on that chill night.

 

No abductor coming in the window. No abductor opening doors and closing them again. No abductor armed with drugs or chloroform. Nobody listening to Gerry McCann urinate. No abductor going out of the window.  Nobody walking through the streets at 9.15 with Madeleine in his arms - as Grange told us three years ago and the parents are now acknowledging. No hidden lairs in the Algarve.

 

You don't have to worry about what it all may mean in the long run or what is going on - frantically or with resignation - behind the feeds.  All you have to remember is this:

 

Kate and Gerry McCann are preparing us all for the  news that abduction by a stranger  never happened.

 

More if it occurs.

 

Visiting Day

The  couple on one of their rare 2018 public appearances

 

A number of Scotland Yard police officers have been at the Rothley home of Kate and Gerry McCann in the last few weeks, it has emerged.

 

The police have refused to say anything  about why they were there, on or off the record,  and have not  confirmed that such a meeting took place.

 

A concerted newsfeed provided to the major tabloids, the Express, Sun, Mirror and Mail, however, brought the news of the "meeting" to the public in a series of synchronised reports, all of which featured  the McCanns' long-time spokesman.

 

The feed quoted a number of anonymous "sources" but none of them were from the police. 

 

The McCanns have rarely been seen in public in 2018 and made no comment today.

 

The Bureau comments: As always with the MSM, the only question is: "why has it appeared?". 

 

Artistic License - Part Two

 

First we show some sentences from Beyond the Smears (BTS). It is immediately obvious that KM has copied chunks  of the article word for word  from Madeleine, thus ensuring that her own version remains consistent with what had already been printed. Smart, eh?

But, even more interesting – the truth always remains the same? – are the  alterations. The second sentences are by Kate McCann. (KM).

 

___________________________________________________

BTS: Gerry had knocked up at the start of the 4.30PM tennis-drills session, but had decided not to exacerbate an injury to his Achilles tendon, so had dropped out and waited around by the courts until the children came back from the kids’ clubs at 5pm for tea. That had been one of the most enjoyable times of the holiday, all the children together for tea, then the adults playing with them afterwards.

 

That's all you're going to get of May 3 events before 7PM. The few hours before that are steeped in mystery to this day. DJS wasn't being allowed near any of them. And KM? We punched in tennis and got thirty results but no Achilles Tendons. Make your own mind up. Abandoned

_________________________________________________________ 

BTS:  Gerry was in his apartment at 7pm, had a glass of water, then a beer, while the children sat with Kate on the couch having stories with a snack.

KM: Gerry arrived back promptly at 7pm, sat down on the other couch and we all chatted for a while.

Pretty word for word, right? Maybe that means it's true. Funny, though, isn’t it? Why couldn’t she just tell us in her own words?

_________________________________________________________

 

BTS: The twins were asleep virtually the moment they lay down. Madeleine not far behind them.

KM: We were in no doubt that all three would be asleep in an instant.

Absolutely.

_______________________________________________________

BTS: At about 7.30PM, Kate and Gerry showered and changed and sat down to have a quiet glass of the sauvignon blanc.

KM: Between 7.15 and 7.30pm Gerry took his shower and I went to blow-dry my wayward fringe and put on a bit of make-up.

Absolutely. Wait a minute, wait a minute - what happened to her f*****g shower?

Oh, yes. She’d already had a shower around 6.30PM, witnessed by the owlish eyes of David Payne. But that is before 7PM and any discussion of that and David Payne is VERBOTEN. And she hadn’t told the PJ about the DP visit until September 2007, had she? So she hadn’t told Smith either. Anyway, "Madeleine"  tried to  repair the damaged shower.

 

KM: Every other evening I’d waited until the children were asleep before showering, but as we were ahead of schedule, and I wanted to freshen up after my run, I thought I’d take advantage of these quiet few minutes. At around six-forty...

 

It's the best she could do but the second shower is in her police statement so abandoning it doesn't work this time...

_____________________________________________________

BTS: The McCanns sat down after a few minutes and then ordered some wine. The Oldfields were next to arrive, then Russell O’Brien and Jane Tanner and, finally, always last, Dave and Fiona Payne with Dianne Webster.

KM: As we chatted, our friends began to appear. Jane arrived first, at about eight-forty, followed a few minutes later by Rachael and Matt. Next came Russell, and finally Fiona, David and Dianne.

A discrepancy. No big deal.

_________________________________________________________

BTS: The Paynes were on the floor above, the only couple with a functioning baby monitor. Russell O’Brien and Jane Tanner had brought a monitor too, but theirs wasn’t getting much of a signal from the Tapas restaurant 50 yards away.

 

KM:...Dave and Fiona, who had a state-of-the-art baby monitor with them.

 

What happened to Jane's baby monitor,  Kate? Why was it abandoned ?

 

Dear Mr Smith, In your article "Kate and Gerry McCann: Beyond the smears", from 16th December 2007, you mention this fact: "Russell O’Brien and Jane Tanner had brought a monitor too, but theirs wasn’t getting much of a signal from the Tapas restaurant 50 yards away." The couple never mentioned to the PJ that they brought a monitor as well, in all their statements they claim that the Paynes were the only ones with a baby monitor. Only in April 2008, in the rogatory interviews conducted by Leicestershire Police, this piece of information appeared. It might seem a small omission, but in the light of possible neglect charges, would have been important. Jane Tanner claims in the rogatory interview that she brought it with her in the evenings and positioned it on a ledge/wall behind her. This was NEVER mentioned to Portuguese Police as the released statements show. The question I have is, how did you get this info before the rogatory interviews even took place? I know you have to protect sources, but this seems a very strange inside knowledge. Thank you in advance. Kind regards [Johanna]

 http://unterdenteppichgekehrt.blogspot.com/search?q=David+james+smith

 ____________________________________________________

 

BTS: [on GM's 9.05 "check"]: Gerry paused over Madeleine, who – a typical doctor’s observation, this – was lying almost in “the recovery position” .

 

Jesus Christ! Recovery position? What they do with you when you’re drugged or unconscious? Recovery position? A sigh of relief all round when we get the "developed" version.

KM: Madeleine was lying there, on her left-hand side, her legs under the covers, in exactly the same position as we’d left her.

Whew! Thank goodness for that. Abandoned

_____________________________________________________

BTS: Putting the door back to five degrees, he went to the loo and left to return to the restaurant…

David James Smith, do you ever get the feeling you might have been used? Five degrees? When did your wife last ask you, “did you shut the door, darling?” And you replied, “yes, dear, five degrees.” Come on.

 

KM: After pulling the bedroom door to, restoring it to its original angle, he went to the bathroom before leaving the apartment.

_______________________________________________________

 

BTS: It is widely believed among the Portuguese media, and perhaps the police too, even now, that the McCanns called Sky News before they called the police. For the record, Sky News picked up the story from GMTV breakfast television, at around 7.30am the following day.

No, not before the police. DP emailed them afterwards - as was long denied but as  KM has to admit. How did BTS  miss that, do you think? 

KM: Dave, seeing Gerry’s anguish and frustration at how little was being done, blah blah knew Madeleine needed more help than she was getting blah blah…at some point before the PJ left he sent an email to Sky News...

_____________________________________________

BTS: The PJ had told them four weeks earlier [August 12]  they were going to be subjected to formal interviews and the McCanns had stayed on, instead of going home at the end of August as originally planned, [our italics] waiting for the interviews to take place. Waiting. Waiting.

KM: [mid-August]However, for many weeks I’d fought against the idea of going home. Even considering it was an enormous emotional and psychological mountain for me to climb. We had always said we would not leave without Madeleine, and I still felt that to do so would be to abandon her. In mid-July I had slowly started to come round to Gerry’s way of thinking – we had to return some time, after all – but now, a month later, with matters taking a turn for the worse, there was even more reason to stay. If we didn’t, it would feel as if we were caving in to the bullying tactics of the media and the PJ. We were beginning to suspect that there was an agenda to force us out of the country and take the pressure off the police. I had no intention of allowing that to happen.

And

KM: On Monday 27 August I had a call from Esther McVey, a Liverpool friend from my late teens, by then a television presenter and Conservative parliamentary candidate. Esther was on the board of Madeleine’s Fund. She said she was scared by our current situation and uncomfortable with what she felt was a ‘political shift’. For our own safety, and ‘to protect Madeleine’s good name’ (I wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that), she thought we ought to come home. It seemed I was being pressurized from all quarters and I didn’t like it.

As it happened, however, the very same day we learned that we would need to vacate our villa by 11 September – news that put a different complexion on matters and forced Gerry and me to tackle this difficult and emotionally charged issue.

So no, "as originally planned" was the old database failing again. It wasn't true

_______________________________________________

 

That's all a part of The Narrative, the one that remains - apart from the chunks bitten out of it by Operation Grange - in place today.

 

Artistic License - Part One

GM and recent supporter at the House of Commons

 Out it all came

 

In the Beginning...

When we wrote about the “Foundation Lie” we described  Gerry McCann addressing  the Commons committee in March 2009 by reading out a framework of a history, a narrative of events in 2007.

It  began with a brief paragraph on the usual “we had to engage with the media who’d suddenly appeared” stuff  before moving on to the real beginning, the “decision to step back from the publicity” in the summer, followed by the “mysterious” onslaught on the McCanns by a wicked media. It excluded almost all that had happened in between.

It was essentially a development of the story  that GM had started telling everybody at the time of his visit to Edinburgh in festival week, also in a recent Bureau,  and that was no accident. By 2011 the narrative appeared in its final form in Kate McCann’s Madeleine and was expounded to the Leveson inquiry in 2011/2012.

Why did history for the McCanns begin in August 2007?

The short answer is - that’s when the McCanns engaged a criminal lawyer.

Game Changer 

They did so knowing they were going to be questioned as arguidos. From then on, their task was to prepare a convincing defence case to save themselves. And, eventually,  they would have a battery of lawyers and journalists to help them do it.

Until August the McCanns had been obliged to play the tabloid-invented role of  innocent  suffering victims “working  with the police”. Now, with the PJ finally showing their hand, all that was going out of the window.

There were limits to what could be done about the police statements: they were fixed in stone. There was room, though, to hide or muffle them using the secrecy rules,  the language barrier, the confusion and their state of trauma early on. If  a police vendetta was added in – impossible while playing the “working with the police role” - then  they might withstand all but a determined prosecution.  

But there was no appetite for a prosecution, in Portugal or the UK. With luck the PJ, who, as GM guessed on September 11 had “nothing” solid, would abandon the case and the police documents would never see the light of day. Who then would start combing through the millions of words of leaks and counter leaks to decide stuff like whether GM had used his key to the apartment door  at 9.05 or not? Most of it wasn’t  even available in English.

“Yes,”  goes the final narrative, “ we used media at first because they suddenly appeared and to help find our child - the police were sceptical and backward  but  we stuck by them for Madeleine’s sake - under pressure for results  the PJ  turned on us, saying  we had got rid of the child! They fed horrible stories to the media who lied about us – the PJ couldn’t accept they were wrong and hounded  us until we were terrified – in the end we proved they had no evidence, it was all just invention by a suspect cop and an incompetent team. We don’t hold this against the decent Portuguese people, of whom we’re very fond but it all hurts terribly to this day.”

See? It's the same story we're telling.



But…

Universal and all purpose, eh? Defence document, attack on the lying media document, libel claim document and, importantly, "the truth" for the good old British public.  All one story.

There was, however, a problem. The McCanns are pathological liars. That doesn’t make them guilty in the disappearance, not at all, but it’s a complicating factor. It means that, however much they might want to tell the truth,  their mental database doesn’t necessarily provide it when called up. It's just a disability: the old Mark Twain saying, “if you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything” applies.

So the construction of this narrative, even with the help of defence experts, was a great deal of challenging work.

So much for our own narrative. Now, let’s just lift the corner of the tablecloth, as it were and give you a small example of the process in action.

Let’s take the December 2007 Times article Beyond the Smears. As the Times boasts, it represented six months of work for its author David James Smith.  They say little about the fact that, whatever its original aim and form, by December it was being used as a conduit for the developing narrative by the parents.

By then the "history's" construction had been in public view for three months as the McCanns and  the defence used Mitchell to fill in the gaps and inconsistencies and counter Portuguese claims – about the sighting, GM’s “memories” about intruders and the rest, and, particularly, about  PJ suggestions that a KM too-unstable-to-be safe-with-her-own-child had suffered “missing hours” before 7PM. All that, together with the Panorama blockbuster, was demonstrating that the narrative was not just for the Portuguese courts but the British public.

So how did it develop on the way to Madeleine?  The truth always stays the same, doesn’t it? Have a look at Part Two.

 

 

 

 

Tall Tales - Part One

Flectere si nequeo superos

Acheronta movebo

Meanwhile…

We referred briefly elsewhere to the fact that a number of the Bureau’s claims against the McCanns dating back to 2009, and once considered as speculative, have been confirmed by judicial or investigative evidence as time has passed. How are the McCanns’ various stories faring these days?

 

Here's a very small selection, some of which have been dealt with in detail in recent Bureaus. They only cover May-September 2007! 

 

The Abduction

 

Claim: Apartment found with shutters forced open (“jemmied”) and intrusion by shuttered window by the parents when they returned from restaurant.

Nature of claim: Public, to the media. First week in May 2007.

Source: Healy/McCann family members, including Kate McCann’s father and Trish McCann, stating that Gerry McCann had given them that information by phone on the night May 3/4. 

Confirmation/rebuttal: None.

Present status: Claim abandoned.

 

______________________________________________

Claim: Madeleine McCann's safety and welfare was being checked every half hour  between 8.30PM-10PM by parents or members of the group. 

Nature of  claim: Police statements.

Source: Parents and Tapas 7.
Confirmation/rebuttal: refuted by Archiving Summary Section G ("... they didn't check on them like they afterwards declared they did"; refuted by evidence from Archiving Summary author Menezes at Lisbon libel/HR trial 2009/10; refuted by case files. In fact Madeleine McCann was only checked once at the most, supposedly at 9.05 PM by Gerry McCann ("by his watch".)
Present status: Untrue

_________________________________________________

 

Claim: An abductor was seen carrying the child away from the apartment at around 9.15-9.20.

Nature of claim: Public.

Source: Kate McCann, Madeleine. "There was little doubt in my mind then, nor is there now, that what Jane saw was Madeleine’s abductor taking her away."

Confirmation/rebuttal: Public statement from Grange discounts JT evidence as an "abductor sighting" on timescale and identification grounds.

Present status: No supporting evidence.  Scotland Yard "almost certain" after investigation that it was not an "abductor" carrying a child.

________________________________________________

 

Claim: Material evidence of an intruder in the apartment between 8.30 - 9.05PM and 9.10-10.00PM.

Nature of claim: Public plus police statement.  Otherwise inexplicable movements of child's bedroom door. 

Source: Gerry and Kate McCann. KM in Madeleine: "What we do now believe is that the abductor had very probably been into the room before Gerry’s check." GM noted "strange" position of bedroom door at 9.05PM in May 10 statement - not in May 4 statement.

Confirmation/rebuttal: Unconfirmed.

Present Status: Like the dogs' results: No supporting evidence.

 

_____________________________________________

 

The Investigation

Claim: Gerry McCann disabled by a virus on August 2 2007.

Nature of claim: Solely public.

Source: Gerry McCann, Kate McCann.

Confirmation/rebuttal: Untrue.

Present status: Admitted lie.

______________________________________________

 

Claim: Unexplained  visit to apartment by police on August 2 2007.

Nature of claim: Solely public.

Source: Kate McCann.  "Something to do with forensics, they’d said. Great timing. And forensics? What was that all about?" and "When you are innocent, it doesn’t occur to you that you could be considered in any other light. Whatever the case, difficult as it is to believe, I still didn’t smell a rat." 

Confirmation/rebuttal: Case files: Search warrant issued to search suspects' ("suspeitos") apartment, presented and executed. Both suspects questioned by detectives in connection with disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

Present Status: Untrue.

 

________________________________________





Claim: Police offered the parents a deal: a lighter sentence if she would plead guilty to disposing of the child.

Nature of claim: Public.

Source: Kate McCann. On the morning of  7 September KM, the person who insists that she always abided by the Portuguese secrecy rules,  gave a "green light", as she described it,  to  family members peddling a line to the UK media about the police having offered an illegal "deal"  the previous day to intimidate and incentivize her into a false confession to disposing of the child's body. She spent two hours spelling out the stories. Her press spokesperson contacted editors  so they were ready for them.

 

The reports dominated the media for more than a day. The Telegraph reported: "In an interview which Mrs McCann gave hours before being declared a suspect, which was published on Sunday, she said: "They want me to lie - I'm being framed."They are basically saying, if I confess Madeleine had an accident, and that I panicked and hid the body in a bag for a month then got rid of it in a hire car, I'd get a two or three years' suspended sentence.""

Confirmation/rebuttal: At no time has KM asserted - rather than implied - that any police officer made any such suggestion, or anything approaching one, or ever spoke to her about deals. The police and justice department gave a comprehensive denial that any such offers had been, or could have been, made. That just leaves her lawyer, who KM, claimed, had acted as messenger for the claim. The lawyer, whose assistant was present when the alleged "message" was delivered,  has rebutted her story, stating that the "deal" was a "misunderstanding" on KM's part.  No supporting evidence has ever been provided; KM has taken the matter no further.  

Present status: It's up there with the jemmied shutters, which also featured intensive phone-calling to family members. Like the shutters claim  it has been  abandoned.

_______________________________________________

 

See a pattern yet?

 

More to come.

 

 

 

 

 



 

Court reports - wandering through sewage

Flectere si nequeo superos

Acheronta movebo

 

Background

We began our campaign against the various frauds and conmen - the Usual Suspects - earlier this year. A major charge of ours was that all of them, from Pat Brown downwards, had actively improved the McCann couples' public reputation. 

 

We founded this Bureau in 2009 with one aim only: not to sleuth, not to "be there for the child", not to put forward theories but to destroy the public reputation of Kate and Gerry McCann  by proving beyond doubt over the long term that their reputation rested on lies and deceit. That is what the motto at the head of the page means.

 

People like the Usual Suspects work against that achievable aim  by making such patently untrue and wicked claims against the McCanns that neutrals are able to dismiss almost all sceptical comment about the couple on the "Kier Simmons" grounds that they are all mad or wicked. That is a view still held by a majority of the population and we have the Suspects  to thank for week after week providing the evidence to confirm that view. That is the reason I attack them.

 

As recently as a week ago a young columnist on the left-wing journal the New Statesman confidently repeated that charge against McCann critics at length and in detail, citing as evidence that internet "conspiracy theorists" even claimed obvious realities "did not exist". It was a disturbing experience to read in a non-tabloid, idealistic journal that dislikes what it calls the "establishment", just what people think of all of us.  

 

We originally included Textusa as a Suspect, and we accused her devoted followers not just of terrifying ignorance and gullibility  but of actively encouraging Textusa in the  fantasies. Then, concerned at Textusa's mental state, we more or less left her alone. In response Textusa posted, "we are waiting for Blacksmith to show us where we have ever lied". 

Fact Check 

So we responded by stating that she had lied in the most fantastic and irrefutable way possible by suggesting that a living person, Nick Townsend, of Gosport didn't exist at all but had been invented as part of a plot, a conspiracy by the blogger Not Textusa and others. I provided links demonstrating the truth. 

In response Textusa simply refused to acknowledge any reality at all, thus proving to the letter the accuracy of the New Statesman's  claims. I repeat, most of the population think that McCann critics on the net are actually mad and cannot tell truth from fiction - and they are taking that opinion directly from the proof that Textusa, Brown, Bennett, Hidiho, Shepherd, Marsden, Roberts and Hall and their supporters offer up for them, without charge, every week, week after week. People can read.

 

And as a little reminder of the links between people's "harmless opinions on the net" and the real world, let me repeat  again that in the absolutely crucial  Lisbon libel trial  the only real name that the McCanns and their lawyers were able to present in evidence as "threatening the safety of the McCanns family" was the name of one of the Usual Suspects: Tony Bennett.  The only one. And their lawyers are ready for the next time: they can also read.

  

These are Textusa's words, taken from the August blogs. They remain up and can be viewed there now. 

 

"As we said in our comment at 20 Aug 2018, 15:59:00, the “Nick T hoax” is as relevant as anything else that is in the [2007 McCann investigation Case] files as it shows, very clearly, the tentacles of the cover-up on the internet. Nick Townsend is just a character, an account. As we have seen, no one has been able to prove that Nick Townsend existed before May 2016."

"We have never said that Nick Townsend is [blogger Not Textusa]. We have said that Nick Townsend is his creation."

"We taunted and we teased. We have given the impression we were being distracted. We weren’t. Nick Townsend is either a secret agent who has erased all his past off the internet (leaving only a £10,00 donation and a ref in a spoof twitter account) or he is as we say, a creation."

"Then, it was very easy to see who indeed Nick Townsend was, or best, what was the purpose of his existence."

Not one of Textusa's supporters has dissociated themselves from these psychotic ravings; not one has made any effort to make up for the damage; not one, it appears, can see that if Nick Townsend  exists then claims made in thousands and thousands of words by Textusa are pure fantasy. Textusa goes Textusa's way, dragging Textusa's disciples along. And not one of them can yet put two and two together and work out that, like the McCanns, if Textusa is irrefutably inventing on that scale, then Textusa  cannot tell truth from fiction and therefore cannot be telling the truth in the assertions about the McCanns and the innocent forty or so people that have been defamed.

 

Prompted by the New Statesman's rather chastening article I put a little reminder together for Textusa that 38 500 words of invented drivel about tables hadn't made the question of Textusa's personal dishonesty go away. I highlighted these questions of truth establishment - which of course lie behind the current public battle of "fake news" and are therefore significant way beyond our McCann internet circus -  this week. I did so in a mocking sketch following the time-honoured English route of presenting very real and very important issues in an entertaining form so as not to bore people.

Until today.

 

Late last night, while fact-checking that Court Reports sketch, I became aware for the first time that a long-term victim of Nick Townsend's perverted stalking was dead. The news was made worse by the fact that Townsend had, as recently as late 2017, publicly accused Not Textusa  of being that person by addressing the latter, madly and insultingly,  by the victim's name on a public forum. He then repeated the accusation on the Stopthemyths website where it was, to their rare credit, deleted. The dirty old man couldn't even get his stalking right.

So in a very creepy way it transpires that both Townsend and Textusa - who gratuitously named the victim for no apparent reason in the blog - are mirror images: neither of them can even tell the difference between a corpse and a living person. Neither of them can respect the living and neither of them can respect the dead.  One insane representative of the Usual Suspects, one wicked and perverted stalker and fanatical supporter of the McCanns who didn't care who died as long as he could stalk. The thing that unites them in a continuing bond is harming innocent people - and persuading their easily-led supporters  to join them in the harm they do. 

I apologise to readers but all interest in continuing the Court Reports stuff drained away from me as I read of the death of this person. The deeper you go, the filthier it gets in McCann land: I feel like I've been wading knee-deep through sewage for the last few days. The McCanns are at least recognisable human beings, just: these people, and their supporters, are like horror-film creations.

 

Case abandoned amid overwhelming disgust and nausea at all of them.