The sycophant

Follow @JohnPlatinumG My old friend Ian McMillan was on the telly today announcing that it was national poetry day. I recognised the rich, pit-deep Barnsley accent and turned round. Otherwise I would not have known it was a special day. He was one of the tutors at an Arvon Foundation course I went on at Ted Hughes' old house, Lumb Bank in the last century.

So as well as making a short video in the afternoon I thought I ought to contribute something more in keeping with the special day. I had Shelley's 'Mask of Anarchy' in mind in which he slags off the Lords, Castlereagh (Murder) and Eldon (Fraud). Nothing changes except the date on the calendar.

The sycophant

Justice Phillips in your ermine gown

you really look the part,

establishment’s own sycophant,

a venerable fart.

Justice Phillips in your cloistered world

made only for the rich,

with tightly-knit embroidery

it only takes a stitch,

Justice Phillips, in your toadyness,

to stitch-up a good man,

with tightly-knit embroidery,

regrettably you can.

Justice Phillips, it’s regrettable,

Assange regrets it too,

but sad regrets are coronets

to sycophants like you.

Justice Phillips, you are leaving us

while Julian remains,

it must be really paining you

for all your toady pains.

Justice Phillips, I hope Qatar gets,

right up your beakish nose,

a country full of sheikhs and slaves,

and oil-rich slimy toads.

John Goss

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJVGdiuzLLo

Justice Nicholas Phillips retired at the end of September to take up a post in Qatar for something I suspect more than £300,000 a year. But this was not before he had presided over Julian Assange’s extradition appeal, for trumped-up charges of rape. Assange lost but the decision was not made in the Supreme Court so much as in Whitehall, the gentlemen's clubs and the upper echelons of government. Anybody who thinks otherwise is a blatant fool.

Judge John Deed and other old retiring farts

Follow @JohnPlatinumG There were only 29 episodes of Judge John Deed, a BBC drama that got close to the true nature of the judiciary, with all the corruption, leverage and manipulation that goes on in chambers. The plug was pulled probably because it was more like what actually happens than fictional drama, and Martin Shaw has demeaned his talent to play a dreadful sixties' policeman in a drama series with a mediocre script that isn't worth the licence fee. In real life there is so much persuasion goes on in the High Court upwards that individual lives are regularly put at risk. And the most recent of these has been that of Julian Assange.

What governments get High Court and Supreme Court judges to do just before they retire is something pretty damned nasty. So Lord Hutton presided over an Inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly, delivered a verdict of suicide from the accounts of unsworn witnesses, and retired to do charity work, when by law there should have been an inquest. Likewise, when Liam Fox was forced to resign and there was another whitewashed inquiry into the Atlantic Bridge financed foreign affairs trips and defence meetings at which Adam Werritty, without Whitehall clearance was attending, they got Gus O'Donnell to chair the inquiry, later found by Craig Murray to have been a real whitewash. Meetings between Werritty, Fox, Miliband, Gould and others were not included and were possibly set up to ease us into what now seems like an imminent War on Iran. Gus O'Donnell had already retired by the time the truth came out. In another disturbing case Judge Geoffrey Riflin QC acquitted four policemen of assault on Babar Ahmad for whom the metropolitan police had already paid damages of £60,000 for the assault in a private case. Riflin  retired straight after the case.

And who is retiring to one of the most despicable and oppressive states on the planet, Qatar, where slavery is still rife? The judge who presided over the Assange extradition appeal, Lord Phillips. Believe me, he is unlikely to be finding in favour of the poor slaves. So he did his dirty work here before retiring to continue abroad. And that is despite today's article in the Daily Mail which shows at least one of the women who accused Assange of rape was lying. As my short satirical video also claimed.