Community Centre

With my touch of the tarbrush, it was physically unsafe for me to leave the house on Saturday afternoon, since Kim McGuinness and Kevan Jones were holding a rally at Lanchester Community Centre. McGuinness or one of her goons might have mistaken me for a Gypsy, while one of Kevan's entourage might have mistaken me for a Palestinian. Among other things. I remember them campaigning jointly with Far Right street gangs in Stanley 20 or so years ago.

Will McGuinness be contesting the Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner election on the same day as that to the North East Metro Mayoralty, in which case she clearly has no expectation of becoming Mayor and no idea what she would do if she did? Or will she not be contesting the PCC election, in which case she arrogantly assumes that she is bound to become Mayor? Get out of that one.

Walk up Stanley Front Street and tell me what good 23 years of Kevan have done. His total vote in 2019 was smaller than his majority in 2001. If the Conservatives had known that they would be only 4,742 votes away from taking North Durham, then they would have put more skin in the game. That constituency will now include Lanchester Ward.

Kevan is having a good war over the Post Office scandal, but in that case, why does he want Keir Starmer to become Prime Minister? Starmer lobbied successfully to make it easier for himself, and only the Director of Public Prosecutions in person, to halt a private prosecution. Yet either he never noticed that subpostmasters had suddenly moved from being archetypal pillars of the community to being prosecuted for dishonesty at a rate of one in seven, or he never saw it as a problem. He never took over any Post Office private prosecution and halted it, but he took over several and turned them into public prosecutions, sending the pregnant Seema Misra to prison with Rose West. That was a public prosecution, by Starmer. It was not the only one.

The other speaker at Saturday's rally was my old colleague as a hospital governor, Joy Allen. I have yet to see the full list of candidates, but I may very well vote for Joy. Since 5th November, she has been aware in detail and from three continents that my guilty pleas were as unreliable as any subpostmaster's, that my initial conviction was also unsound, that the latest case against me was unpresentable, and that it was not I who ought to be in prison. When will the arrest be made? Are they going to wait until 19th June, to do it on the steps of Durham Crown Court? Joy won by 3158 votes, two per cent, on a second round that no longer exists, having won the first round by only 1336, 0.82 per cent. An arrest and charge before polling day would get my vote.

There is no longer any bad character evidence that could credibly be used against me, and they have known for two and half months why not. This would be a Post Office-style "computer says yes" prosecution in which their only witness was a suspended Police Officer who had already set things back seven months by disappearing off the face of the Earth. If you are the Crown, then have some dignity.