Monday 4 December 2017

Damian Green case: The police are not moral guardians.

To some extent I agree with David Herdson over at Political Betting  on claims by former detective claims thousands of porn images were viewed on Damian Green's computer


As he points out 

......That being the case, the public doesn’t have a right to know what is or isn’t on Green’s computer (or that of any other MP), unless what’s there is breaking the law. Yes, in other walks of life, to download porn would be a sackable offence but MPs aren’t in a normal job. For a start, they’re effectively self-employed and so there isn’t anyone to sack them bar the electorate. Nor are they paid as such for their time in their office – an MP receives the same whether he or she works 15 hours a day or does nothing for five years. How they spend their time is their business until the point where it’s for them to justify their work to the voters.
There is an argument  that Theresa May is effectively Mr Green line manager and should  act in the same way any responsible  boss would have acted and at least sacked Mr Green, but that is her  perogative.

The real disturbing point is whether the Police retired  or not should act as some kind of Moral Guardians


The retired Officer Neil Lewis told the BBC he was "shocked" at the alleged volume of material and had "no doubt whatsoever" that it was accessed by the Tory MP, who is effectively Theresa May's deputy.

He stressed that none of the images were "extreme", but said analysis of the computer suggested they had been viewed "extensively" over a three-month period, sometimes for hours at a time.


Mr Lewis told the BBC he was involved in analysing the then opposition immigration spokesman's computer during a police investigation into Home Office leaks.
He said that although "you can't put fingers on a keyboard", a number of factors meant that he was sure it was Mr Green himself who was accessing the "thumbnail" images.
"The computer was in Mr Green's office, on his desk, logged in, his account, his name," said Mr Lewis.
"In between browsing pornography, he was sending emails from his account, his personal account, reading documents ... it was ridiculous to suggest anybody else could have done it."
Similar material had also been accessed on Mr Green's laptop, he claimed.

Surely anyone who has been investigated by the police should be  if they have broken no laws be allowed to have any aspect of their personnel lives private.

Though the legality of porn is an interesting question .

It is illegal but the boundaries   have expanded to a level that any prosecution  would probably fail in most cases.

It is not up to individual Police Officer  to pas judgement.

I am not interested in Politicians  personnel lives and tend to abide by the line that I don't care who Politicians sleep  so long as they don't try to tell who we can.

It is not so long ago that the outing of a Gay MP or any one else was  a career ending move even after it was no longer a criminal offence.

It may not be the same as accessing Porn but it is still a matter of privacy if you are not breaking the law.   

Of course there is a difference in the Green case , but its not for me  to condemn him for allegedly  looking at legal porn unless he has made moral judgements himself and he is on record on as attacking  such sites and those who access them.



It is not for me to pass judgment on Green or any one else .

1 comment:

Leigh Richards said...

Well said Glyn. There is no suggestion that any of the images viewed were illegal, so even if it was damian green who viewed the images - and we cant be certain of that - he hasnt done anything illegal. Yes there is the issue of viewing porn at work, and maybe the best thing for him to have done would have been to have stood down from his position in theresa may's government while the matter was investigated. And the fact he hasnt done so is illustrative i think of the simple fact May's chaotic government simply cant sustain losing another key figure.

But nobody should feel comfortable with the the public nature of this investigation - indeed so much of it has been carried out in full public glare they may as well have televised the investigation. And what seems to have been missed in this fiasco is why police were in damian green's office in the first place? It was because green's office was an important part of opposition to a draconian police powers bill gordon brown's government were trying to introduce.