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www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk... R
Gardner recalled on Radio 4's Today programme that the Queen had told him some years previously that she had asked the Home Secretary why the Muslim cleric and notorious homophobe Abu Hamza was still on the loose: "Surely this man must have broken some laws? Why is he still at large?"
By lunchtime the same day - September 25 - Beeb bosses were beating their breasts and crying contrition.
"This morning on the Today programme our correspondent Frank Gardner revealed details of a private conversation which took place some years ago with the Queen... The BBC and Frank deeply regret this breach of confidence. It was wholly inappropriate. Frank is extremely sorry for the embarrassment caused and has apologised to the palace."
Nothing like this would ever happen again, the corporation promised.
That is, if a similar story were to come their way in future, they'd suppress it.
In contrast, in relation to the Savile affair, the line is that no similar story will ever be suppressed again.
The fact that the Queen had pushed a politician to explain why a named person was not behind bars was a significant story. This was the key characteristic which it shared - even if it differed in all other respects - with Jimmy Savile's brute behaviour.
The BBC had ditched principle in deference to the Royals. And there's hardly a word about it.
The reason for the silence is that the practice of keeping the people in ignorance of the real views of the Royals has been in place for so long that it's widely assumed to be a legal, or constitutional, imperative. But it's nothing of the sort.
It is a 20th-century conceit and amounts to a conspiracy of silence.
The timidity with which it's accepted testifies to the role of the mainstream media in shoring up the existing order.
Last week, the Attorney General for England and Wales, Dominic Grieve, intervened to overturn a ruling by an Information Tribunal that the people have the right to know what pressure Prince Charles has been bringing on Government ministers and towards what end.
Mr Grieve explained that giving the public access to this information might jeopardise Charles's ability to perform the role of King; the implication being that, if the detail of his political lobbying were generally known, he'd find it harder to win acceptance as ruler.
It is difficult to think of a better, or more compelling, reason to publish the information as speedily and widely as modern technology allows.
But in the stupefied world where Royals are revered, it's regarded as a reason for squashing the truth.
The tribunal ruling referred to 27 letters sent to seven ministers over a seven-month period.
The Attorney General told the Commons that these contain "particularly frank" expressions of Charles' "most deeply-held personal views and beliefs".
We know some of Charles' beliefs: he's in favour of fox hunting, has dreadful taste in architecture and regards homeopathy as a branch of medical science.
In what way and in what terms has he been pressing ministers to reflect these beliefs in policy decisions?
Has he lobbied against the Freedom of Information Act? Was Mr Grieve's action in removing the Royals from the remit of the Act the result of a demand from Charles?
The British people are not allowed to know. This isn't democracy. This is feudalism.
And most of the media appear to have no problem with it.
www.themortonreport.com...
In his famous biography Diana: Her True Story, Andrew Morton wrote that in 1987, "Jimmy Savile, who often acts as a high-powered go-between in royal circles, offered his services. "
DIANA: "Jimmy Savile rang me up yesterday, and he said, 'I'm just ringing up, my girl, to tell you that His Nibs [Charles] has asked me to come and help out the redhead, and I'm just letting you know, so that you don't find out through her or him; and I hope it's all right by you.' And I said, 'Jimmy, you do what you like.'"
Inside the paedophile's lair: Chilling pics of bunk beds at Savile's Highlands cottage raided by police where 'up to 20 suffered abuse'
Number of Savile's victims now 'fast approaching' 300, it was revealed today
All but two are women and Scotland Yard also chasing 400 lines of inquiry
Police raid his cottage in Glencoe, Scotland, looking for forensic evidence to help UK-wide investigation
It has been untouched since his death last year and is strewn with his belongings
The DJ bought remote home in 1998 and entertained guests including Prince Charles
Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk...
Sir Jimmy Savile: Prince Charles’s love for Savile's 'ladies’
The Prince of Wales sent Sir Jimmy Savile a Christmas card in which he asked him to 'Give my love to your ladies in Scotland'. www.telegraph.co.uk...
Savile police to arrest up to a dozen 'household name' celebrities within days as it's revealed officers blew SEVEN chances to trap him
Scotland Yard reveals that TV stars may have helped Savile or abused children themselves, adding: 'we will come for them'
Team of 30 officers from Scotland Yard have 'arrest strategy' and will act 'within days'
Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk... z2AP5a7qZv
Originally posted by Cobaltic1978
What was Jimmy's relationship with Prince Phillip, before they had a fall out? And why did they fall out?
This just gets bigger and bigger and if there is anyway in which any of the royals were involved, then it will not come out. Can you imagine a future King being involved in this despicable abuse of vunerable children?
Why did no one act? It's shameful on our justice system and shameful of the BBC for covering up such offences!!
In 1999, an international investigation of child pornographers and paedophiles run by Britain's National Criminal Intelligence Service, code named Operation Ore, resulted in 7,250 suspects being identified in the United Kingdom alone. Some 1850 people were criminally charged in the case and there were 1451 convictions. Almost 500 people were interviewed "under caution" by police, meaning they were suspects. Some 900 individuals remain under investigation. In early 2003, British police began to close in on some top suspects in the Operation Ore investigation, including senior members of Blair's government.
However, Blair issued a D-Notice, resulting in a gag order on the press from publishing any details of the investigation. Blair cited the impending war in Iraq as a reason for the D-Notice. Police also discovered links between British Labour government paedophile suspects and the trafficking of children for purposes of prostitution from Belgium and Portugal (including young boys from the Casa Pia orphanage in Portugal).
www.guardian.co.uk...
A former senior royal aide has revealed that Jimmy Savile's behaviour when he visited Prince Charles's official home at St James' Palace was a cause for "concern and suspicion".
Dickie Arbiter, who handled media relations for the Prince and Princess of Wales while spokesman for the Queen between 1988 and 2000, said the suspected paedophile TV presenter used to rub his lips up the arms of Prince Charles's young female assistants as a greeting.
Savile is understood to have visited Prince Charles's official London residence several times in the late 1980s when he was acting as a kind of marriage counsellor between Charles and Princess Diana. A spokesman for the Prince of Wales confirmed the prince and Savile formed a relationship in the late 1970s after coming together through their work with wheelchair sports charities. Charles led tributes to Savile when he died a year ago.
"He would walk into the office and do the rounds of the young ladies taking their hands and rubbing his lips all the way up their arms if they were wearing short sleeves," Arbiter said of Savile. "If it was summer [and their arms were bare] his bottom lip would curl out and he would run it up their arms. This was at St James's Palace. The women were in their mid to late 20s doing typing and secretarial work."
Arbiter did not raise his concerns formally and there is no suggestion Savile committed any crimes while on royal premises or when he was with Prince Charles on numerous occasions from the 1970s onwards. But the concern over his behaviour expressed by a senior aide will raise questions over how Savile, who is now under investigation in relation to child abuse involving 300 potential victims, managed to develop such a long-standing relationship with the heir to the throne.
Asked about Savile's behaviour with the royal assistants or whether Prince Charles had taken any action to find out if anyone in his family or staff might have suffered any abuse or have any information relating to the criminal investigation into Savile's alleged paedophilia, a spokesman for the prince said: "We have no record of anyone making a complaint."
"The prince first met Savile through their shared interest in supporting disability charities [the prince became patron of the British Wheelchair Sports Foundation in the late 1970s] and it was primarily because of this connection that they maintained a relationship in the years that followed," the spokesman said.
Arbiter said he thought the women might have thought Savile's greeting was "rather funny", but he said it was a cause for concern and he struggled to understand why Savile was granted such access to the royal family.
"I looked at him as a court jester and told him so," said Arbiter. "I remember calling him an old reprobate and he said 'not so much of the old'."
Concern about Savile's behaviour at the palace emerged as Sir Roger Jones, former chairman of the BBC's corporate charity Children In Need, said he had been so uncomfortable about Savile that he did not allow him to have any association with the cause. Jones, a BBC governor from 1997 to 2002, said he had "no evidence" that Savile was up to anything but "we all recognised he was a pretty creepy sort of character".
"When I was with Children In Need, we took the decision that we didn't want him anywhere near to the charity," he told the BBC.
Prince Charles met Savile on numerous occasions. In 1999 he accepted an invitation to a private meal at Savile's Glencoe home which was this week daubed with graffiti reading "Jimmy the beast". Savile asked three local women to dress up in pinafores emblazoned with the letters HRH and Charles subsequently sent the television presenter a Christmas card with the note: "Jimmy, with affectionate greetings from Charles. Give my love to your ladies in Scotland."
Charles reportedly sent him a box of cigars and a pair of gold cufflinks on his 80th birthday with a note that read: "Nobody will ever know what you have done for this country Jimmy. This is to go some way in thanking you for that."
Savile used to boast of his royal connections, made sure to be photographed with Charles on numerous occasions and ingratiated himself once telling the Daily Mail the prince was "the nicest man you will ever meet".
"Royalty are surrounded by people who don't know how to deal with it," Savile said in an interview. "I have a freshness of approach which they obviously find to their liking. I think I get invited because I have a natural, good fun way of going on and we have a laugh. They don't get too many laughs."
The day after the meal in Glencoe Savile persuaded Charles to join him for a photo opportunity at his local post office where he went to pick up his pension money.
"There was a limit to what he could get away with in the royal household," he said.
He also said palace advisers felt the prince's charities might benefit from a connection with Savile, at the time one of the country's most famous TV stars.
Perhaps Savile's most unlikely role was that of personal counsel to Prince Charles in the late 1980s at a time when the royal family was in deep trouble. The marriages of Charles and Diana and Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson were disintegrating. Around new year 1990 Charles asked Savile to help the Duchess of York with what Savile later said was keeping her profile down.
Princess Diana was recorded telling James Gilbey on the so-called "squidgygate tape": "Jimmy Savile rang me up yesterday, and he said: 'I'm just ringing up, my girl, to tell you that His Nibs [Prince Charles] has asked me to come and help out the redhead [the Duchess of York], and I'm just letting you know, so that you don't find out through her or him; and I hope it's all right by you.'"