#bedfordshire police

[princessanneftw]

The Princess Royal interview: ‘I’m not sure that rewilding at scale is necessarily a good idea’

With conservation close to her heart, HRH explains what’s needed to save animals under threat and how the monarchy plays its part

By Jessamy Calkin for The Telegraph

Inside St James’s Palace there is a bit of a flutter about the weather. Her Royal Highness the Princess Royal has several engagements today, and things are not looking good; due to wind, the helicopter might not be able to land at the designated sites, which will make travelling times to and from events longer.

The staff are waiting to be informed by the police, who are in touch with the helicopter pilot. HRH, as everyone seems to call her, has not yet been told.

She has a lot to fit in: directly after our interview, she is off to a meeting about Gordonstoun school, in London, by car, then by helicopter to give a speech at an English Rural Housing Association conference in Bedfordshire, followed by a visit to the Aircraft Research Association, where she will unveil a plaque, then back to St James’s Palace to change for evensong at The King’s Chapel of the Savoy, where she will be reading the lesson for the Royal Victorian Order.

Her day will finish at about nine, when she will be able to eat. Quite often she has a dinner engagement as well. Next week she is going to Mumbai for four days.

Not for nothing is she known as the hardest-working royal. She is involved with more than 300 charities, organisations and military regiments, and last year carried out 200-plus engagements – more than any other member of the Royal family.

Her first official engagement was at the age of 18; shortly afterwards, in 1970, she became president of Save the Children – a position that led to her being nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize – and her work with that charity continues to this day.

Early on, her father, the Duke of Edinburgh, advised her to pick the charities she was interested in – and her interests have multiplied.

But one charity that is particularly close to her heart is the Whitley Fund for Nature, which is why I’m here. Started by Edward Whitley OBE as the Whitley Awards, WFN is now celebrating its 30th anniversary, and the Princess has been a patron for 24 years.

The annual ceremony takes place at the Royal Geographical Society in London and is colloquially known as the Green Oscars; WFN distributes grants totalling around £500,000 to worthy international winners.

So far, £20 million has been awarded to 200 conservationists across 80 countries. And the Princess has never missed a single ceremony, presenting the awards and delivering heartfelt speeches.

HRH is quite probably the most respected member of the Royal family. Her lack of pomp and ceremony and the low-key dedication with which she carries out her duties is much admired. There is no whingeing. She refused titles for her children, Peter and Zara.

She is well known for her dry sense of humour. She is an exceptionally accomplished horsewoman and in 1976 became the first member of the Royal family to compete in the Olympics; she had won Sports Personality of the Year five years earlier. She famously resisted an attempted kidnap in 1974.

She has also become an inadvertent style icon, often rewearing outfits she first wore decades ago, which is both charmingly thrifty and impressive in that she can still fit into them, and she seldom buys anything that is not made in the UK.

She recently made a good-natured appearance on her son-in-law Mike Tindall’s podcast The Good, the Bad & the Rugby and she seems like an all-round good egg.

She has both gravitas and spirit – there was some very moving footage of her accompanying her mother’s coffin on the long journey from Balmoral to Westminster Abbey.

Back in St James’s Palace, Charles, her private secretary, is arranging the chairs, anticipating where she might like to sit. HRH arrives in a striking bright-green suit over a striped silky shirt and heads smartly for a different chair than the one offered.

How did she first get involved with Whitley? ‘That’s entirely Edward’s fault,’ she says in her crisp voice. ‘But the common denominator is Gerald Durrell.’

The Princess grew up reading Durrell’s books and became patron of his zoo in Jersey, part of what is now the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, in 1972. ‘He very kindly asked me to become involved in the zoo – as it was then – in Jersey, and Edward [later became] one of Durrell’s trustees.

‘He and I had similar beliefs in what Gerald was doing. Apart from the fact that Gerald wrote very good books, during his travels he seemed to understand better than most the impact on the populations in which animals lived and the relationship between them and their animals.

‘Being told you have to save this, that and the other is all very well but have you been there? Have you ever tried living in that environment to find out what that means to them? Because the fundamental point is that unless the conservation comes from the local area, it won’t be sustained.’

No one is going to save an animal just because they’re told to. ‘You’ve got to work out how the animals are going to survive with the people who live there, who will be the ones who make sure that it works.’

What was Durrell like? ‘Every bit as entertaining as you would think. His humour but also his understanding of the relative importance of things in other people’s lives was absolutely fascinating – and he was spot on.’

Durrell said he felt ‘sympathy for the small and ugly; since I’m big and ugly I try to preserve the little ones’. He was an expert on captive breeding, with a view to releasing into the wild, and he tended to select animals that were close to extinction, or those that could best be helped, or just ones that were not very charismatic.

‘Yes, not the sexy ones,’ says the Princess. ‘Or the obvious ones. His approach was very holistic. He understood the impact of habitat – not just on one species but how all of the things that lived in that habitat related to each other and that you couldn’t replicate that instantly somewhere else – it was very specific to an area.’

Gerald Durrell died in January 1995, of septicaemia. He was an alcoholic and had successfully received a liver transplant but died of complications it gave rise to. ‘He told me that there was no point doing a transplant because his old liver had got used to being fed all the things he’d been given to eat and drink in order to make deals as he went round the world,’ the Princess says, smiling.

Durrell’s legacy is long. One of his innovations was to establish training for conservationists from around the world. The first trainee went on to become the first director of the National Parks and Conservation Service in Mauritius, and thousands of students from 151 countries have since attended the centre, whose graduates became known as Gerald Durrell’s Army.

This became the title of a book by Edward Whitley, who travelled round the world to assess the progress of some of the trainees and the animals they were conserving – such as the largest eagle in the world in the Philippines and Alaotran gentle lemurs in Madagascar.

To launch the book in 1992, Whitley was invited to give a talk at the Royal Geographical Society, and he asked the Princess to come along. It was at the book launch that he decided to set up the charity.

‘I sat down with Nigel Winser, who was the deputy director of the RGS and a long-time friend, and we designed what became the Whitley Awards on the back of a napkin,’ he tells me. In 1999, Whitley asked the Princess to become a patron. By then, ‘Attenborough was already on board, which encouraged her to think it wasn’t a fly-by-night organisation which would crash and burn’.

The awards focus on community-based conservation projects around the world. In order to qualify, each project has to be up and running – it cannot be a pipe dream. Initially there was only one award; this year there were six – of £40,000 each in project funding – plus a Gold Award of £100,000, given each year to a past winner in recognition of their outstanding contribution to conservation.

‘The reason WFN is so effective,’ says Alastair Fothergill, whose company Silverback made the acclaimed TV nature series Wild Isles, and who like Attenborough is a WFN ambassador, ‘is because its grants are awarded at the very cutting edge of conservation, where relatively modest funds can go a long way. Over the years, the fund has kickstarted the careers of many pioneers who have become leading lights in conservation.’

This year’s projects included safeguarding seabird nesting sites in Mexico; establishing ‘lion guards’ promoting coexistence in Cameroon; and protecting pangolins in Nepal, lemurs in Madagascar, freshwater fish in Lake Victoria and saiga antelope in west Kazakhstan. Each one heavily involves local communities.

In addition, WFN provides continuation funding for award-winners. To mark the 25th anniversary of Whitley, Kate Humble, also an ambassador, and Attenborough hosted an event at the Natural History Museum to help raise £1 million for continuation funding.

‘It was the first really big fundraiser we had,’ says Humble. ‘And one of the donors underwrote the entire cost of the event – so everything raised went into the continuation fund.’

The RGS ceremonies are joyous events. In addition to being presented with their award by the Princess Royal, each winner has a short film made of their work, narrated by Attenborough, screened at the event. ‘I’ve been going for 20 years,’ says Humble, ‘and every year I’m blown away by the winners – what they’ve overcome, what they’ve achieved.

‘You hear so much bad news, and you think, you know what? The world can be OK because people out there are doing this stuff – it’s demonstrable, it’s scientifically rigorous and it’s working. [It’s] an incredibly uplifting and inspiring evening.

‘And every year I watch Princess Anne speak and she never sounds like she’s reading someone else’s words. She cares deeply about what this charity does and what these people who win the awards have achieved – she is not a figurehead just trotting out nice words and providing a photo op. She could run the charity, she knows it so well and cares about it so deeply.

‘I’m not anti-royal,’ says Humble, ‘but neither am I someone who would go and wave a Union Jack. But when I see her I think, frankly you’re worth whatever it is we pay.’

HRH talks with fluency and knowledge on every subject. ‘She’s like a sponge – it’s unbelievable the information that’s stored in her brain,’ said her daughter Zara in an interview for ITV’s Anne: The Princess Royal at 70. ‘It’s quite annoying as well.’

She needs to know a lot because she works with a diverse range of charities, taking in early years, healthcare, microfinance and animal welfare. Promoting collaboration between charities is key. ‘I do a lot of that,’ she says now. ‘I have meetings bringing them together which they all seem to enjoy, though sometimes it’s a bit illogical.

‘Knitting together all the international NGOs is important, but we need to look slightly outside the box – can we do this better, are there ways of helping people to be more sustainable?’

The Princess does occasionally discuss conservation with the King, she says, but she won’t say if they always agree. And her grandchildren? How does she teach them about conservation? (She has five, four girls and a boy.)

‘I don’t see so much of them but making the point that they live in an area which they shouldn’t take for granted is important I think; both my children are aware of that.’

Gatcombe Park in Gloucestershire, where the Princess and her husband, Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence, live in an 18th-century manor with 730 acres of parkland, has some beautiful trees – ‘the ones that survive – quite a lot don’t, we live on Cotswold brash which is not popular with plants; but having said that we have beeches.

‘You’ve just got to live with what’s there and make sure it doesn’t get overwhelmed. I’m not sure that rewilding at scale is necessarily a good idea – it probably is in corners, but if you’re not careful you rewild all the wrong things because they are just the things that are more successful at growing.

‘My biggest row at home is ragwort. Lots of people think that ragwort is absolutely brilliant because butterflies love it, but it’s not good for the horses [it is toxic]. I would say don’t take all the ragwort out, just where the horses are – but it’s quite a delicate balance.’

There are, she says, ‘quite a lot of horses at home, but they’re other people’s as well’. She rides whenever she can. ‘It’s a very good place to observe nature from.’

The Princess supports several horse-related charities, and became patron of Riding for the Disabled in 1971, and president in 1985. ‘It was just becoming a national body when I was invited to become a patron – at that stage I knew nothing about disability but the concept that ponies or horses could make a difference was obviously interesting and I knew about them. No matter what the disability was, the answer was, if they’d like to ride, we’ll give it a go. The commonality of the experience was important.’

Essential things for running a charity, she says, are evaluation and thinking of the long term. She cites the influence of Eglantyne Jebb, founder of Save the Children, ‘who constantly evaluated programmes to see if they were making a difference, whether they were doing the right things and whether people were invested’.

And it’s important to keep projects focused and manageable. ‘I’ve come to the conclusion that scale is the thing that defeats any good idea, because it can get to a size where people can’t cope.’

She has spoken in the past about the huge value of long-term commitment, in terms of the constitutional monarchy as well as in charity work. ‘Seeing things in the long term is a challenge,’ she says now, ‘but maybe part of our [value] – as a family – is long-term continuity, because the long-term view is quite hard to come by. And I think we can do that.’

May I ask what she might have done as a profession in another life? HRH laughs and looks vaguely impatient. ‘You can ask but I’ve no idea.’ Does she ever think about that?

‘Not really, and it’s way too late to have those concerns – in a way the fortunate part of my life has been the broad spectrum, to see so much. Not having a very specific interest has been a bonus, I suppose. We all have ways of doing things and with Whitley it is the practical aspects of what they do, and how to support them [that has been my focus].’

Edward Whitley, a member of the wealthy Greenall Whitley brewing family, set up Whitley Asset Management in 2002, alongside its finance director Louise Rettie, to serve a small number of clients. But there had always been animals in his life – his great-grandfather founded a small charity called the Whitley Animal Protection Trust; his great-great-uncle Herbert was an eccentric animal breeder who started Paignton Zoo.

In Edward’s office is a stuffed cockatoo that belonged to Herbert and a photograph of Mary, his favourite chimpanzee. Mary was famous for riding around on her tricycle and walking the dogs, or taking visitors by the hand and leading them round the zoo.

Edward studied English at Oxford then went into banking, joining NM Rothschild & Sons in 1983. He left in 1990 to write: Gerald Durrell’s Army came out in 1992 and he also co-wrote Rogue Trader, the autobiography of disgraced banker Nick Leeson, and worked with Richard Branson on his memoir.

Whitley is a tall, gentle man who doesn’t like talking about himself but is full of unbridled enthusiasm for WFN, and in particular its royal patron. ‘She transformed the charity – we never would have had the success we’ve had without her involvement. She saw what was possible and really helped us to achieve it, and she inspires the winners to do more. The winners are always pretty amazed at how she cross-examines them and cuts to the chase so quickly when she meets them.

‘She has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the world, and a phenomenal memory, and she is also very funny… And think of her father and the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award – she’s seen what a lifetime of work can achieve.’

In her speech at the Whitley Awards earlier this year, the Princess Royal cited her father, Gerald Durrell and Edward Whitley as the inspirations for her work with WFN. Among winners and their communities, she said, ‘it’s the global ambition to truly make a difference that has been astonishing’.

The awards, she continued, are for ‘the people on the ground, they’re the sharp end… It’s all very well to be here and understand what we think are the challenges, and want to make a difference, but when you meet the people who are actually out front and can turn that into a reality, it’s a real inspiration.’

Over the years, she has visited some of the winners’ projects, when her charity work takes her to those countries, ‘but not as many as I would like’, she says. In Uganda, for example, she met Dr Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, who was working on improving hygiene in local communities after viruses had spread to gorillas she was managing in Bwindi national park. And in 1997, before she became a WFN patron, she travelled in a boat up the Amazon to see pink dolphins.

‘She was in Colombia for Save the Children and she asked the British embassy to include a visit to the Amazon in her trip – she was very interested in the dolphins,’ says Dr Fernando Trujillo, who went on to win an award in 2007.

‘The British embassy contacted me as an expert on rivers and dolphins. I was a little bit intimidated, and it was raining and I was worried we wouldn’t see any dolphins, but in the end we counted 32 – and she was so excited, every time she saw one she would jump up and down with excitement, and then rein herself in as if she suddenly remembered she was a princess. I could see her love for the environment was very genuine. From that day she was my favourite royal person.’

Another winner, Pablo Bordino, whose picture with HRH had been in the paper in Buenos Aires was flying back to Argentina. One of the flight attendants recognised him and when he arrived at the airport there was a television crew waiting to meet him. It raised the profile of his NGO - which protected marine life and habitats in Argentina - enormously and enabled him to generate further funding. ‘That’s the effect HRH has,’ says Whitley. ‘You can’t quantify it.’

Several award-winners went to the Princess’s 60th-birthday celebrations, including Claudio Padua, a successful businessman from Rio who gave it all up to pursue conservation, training at Durrell in Jersey and moving to a forest in Brazil with his wife, Suzana, and three children.

HRH had been to see them at their headquarters outside São Paulo and had taken an interest in their efforts to conserve the black lion tamarin, a monkey. They had no idea her visit would be such an ordeal, with all the security arrangements. ‘We had a call to ask what kind of security we had,’ says Claudio. ‘I said, “I have an old dog, that’s all.”’

‘She turned up with a security detail and entourage,’ Suzana adds. ‘They wanted to go into the forest to see the monkeys in our Land Rover and her security team asked, “Has this car been checked?” I said it hadn’t and they became very nervous but she ignored them and just got in anyway.’

Years later, the Paduas were invited to Buckingham Palace for her 60th. ‘It was a beautiful opportunity for us,’ says Suzana, ‘and as she came down the stairs she spotted us and said, “Oh how nice to see you. How are the monkeys?”’

The Whitley Fund for Nature is hosting a #PeopleforPlanet biodiversity summit on 6 and 7 November at London’s Royal Institution, where members of the public can hear live from Whitley Gold Award-winning conservationists from Africa, Central and South America, and Asia

[ukrfeminism]

Social media influencer Andrew Tate will be extradited to the UK after a British police force secured a European arrest warrant for allegations of rape and human trafficking.

Bedfordshire Police said they are working with authorities in Romania as part of an investigation into the 37-year-old and his 35-year-old brother Tristan.

The pair were detained on Tuesday and appeared at the court of appeal in Bucharest where it was ruled they would be extradited following the conclusion of legal proceedings in Romania.

The allegations, which the two brothers “unequivocally deny”, date back to 2012-2015.

Speaking to reporters outside court following the ruling, Andrew Tate told reporters he and his brother are “very innocent men”.

He said: “I want to give absolute credit to Romanian justice for making the correct decision today.

“Unfortunately I don’t think many people in Romania understand, but in the West, in the countries that are owned by the satanists, when you get to a certain level of fame you either put on a dress or you go to jail and I’m happy to make my choice which is jail every single time, my soul is not for sale neither are my principles.

“We’re very innocent men and in time everybody’s going to see that.

“We are excited to finish this judicial process and clear our names.”

The pair were released from police custody following the hearing, their representative said.

Lawyers representing four women who accuse Tate of rape and sexual assault said they wrote to UK police to request his detention over fears he would flee Romania.

In response to the claims made by law firm McCue Jury & Partners, Tate’s spokeswoman said: “We unequivocally deny any accusations that Andrew or Tristan Tate intends to abscond from Romania to evade the judicial proceedings.

“Our clients are fully committed to actively participating in the legal process and defending their reputation.

“We believe this rumour has originated from a popular online influencer who misconstrued a text message from our clients while streaming live. There is simply no truth to it.”

The law firm said the four British accusers were the subject of an investigation by Hertfordshire Constabulary.

The Hertfordshire investigation was closed in 2019.

In response to the court of appeal’s ruling on Tuesday, the Tate brothers’ lawyer Eugen Vidineac said: “We appreciate the Bucharest Court of Appeal’s decision to postpone the extradition of Andrew and Tristan Tate.

“This ruling provides an opportunity for the brothers to participate fully in their defence and for the legal process to proceed in a transparent manner.”

Commenting on the Tate brothers being detained, Matthew Jury, managing partner at McCue Jury & Partners, said: “Today’s news is very welcome as it has been a significant concern to many that Tate would seek to avoid justice in Romania and abroad.

“We are grateful to the British authorities for taking our concerns seriously and issuing an arrest warrant.”

Mr Jury said Andrew Tate had “spread a vast amount of disinformation about the criminal allegations he faces in the UK” since his first arrest in Romania.

The law firm said it welcomed the court of appeal’s decision on Tuesday.

In a separate case, the Tate brothers are charged with rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women in Romania after being arrested in the country’s capital in December 2022 alongside two Romanian women.

All four deny the allegations.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Abused By My Girlfriend tells the remarkable story of Alex Skeel, a 23-year-old man from Bedford who survived an abusive relationship with his girlfriend Jordan Worth.

Combining observational filming with personal and police archive, this film provides a raw and uninhibited window into a teenage romance that descended into terrible violence.

Alongside Alex's shocking and thought-provoking testimony, his family and friends also share their stories of seeing him slowly slip away, powerless to stop it, and unaware of how bad it would get.

Bedfordshire Police described Alex's case as one of the most extreme cases of domestic violence they had ever dealt with. In hospital, doctors examined Alex's body and told him that he was just ten days away from death.

In April 2018, Jordan was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. She became the first female in the UK to be convicted of coercive and controlling behaviour.

By sharing his story, Alex hopes to challenge assumptions about violence and masculinity in relationships, and to empower victims of domestic violence to come forward.

--

Interviews with Alex.

I didn't know if I was to leave-- I've come across so many men that haven't won in the family courts and gotten the best deal out of it. And that was-- to be honest with you, during the time I never really thought about leaving. It was just purely, is the next day going to be better than the last and it's survival mode, you're just constantly protecting yourself at all times. And I never actually thought about it, and people have asked, do I think people should know anything before, and I genuinely didn't think. It was all about just like a boxer in a ring, keep your hands up.

I was pretty much-- I actually genuinely was waiting to just die. Because I just kept hoping that the next day maybe one less hit on the head or one less stab or I didn't get boiling water. Because if that was the case, it would be a far better day than the day before.

[mariacallous]

More lives were lost than saved because of the activities of a man alleged to have been the highest-ranking British intelligence agent in the IRA during the Northern Ireland Troubles, according to a seven-year investigation into his activities.

The Kenova report published on Friday finds that the agent Stakeknife saved “between high single figures and low double figures” of lives but “nowhere near hundreds [as] sometimes claimed”.

The report recommends that the UK government and the republican leadership acknowledge and apologise for their failures over the spy’s actions.

Freddie Scappaticci, a west Belfast man who died in April last year, denied being the agent codenamed Stakeknife. He is not named as the agent in this report.

He was linked to more than a dozen murders during his time as a senior member of the Provisional IRA’s ruthless internal security unit known as “the nutting squad”, which was tasked with identifying and killing security force informers. Its victims were often found shot in the head with their bodies dumped along the border after suffering torture.

Many families of victims believe the security forces allowed their loved ones to die to protect Stakeknife’s identity. They say that the IRA man charged with rooting out British informers was himself an informer, with one former senior intelligence officer once describing him as “the golden egg”.

Operation Kenova, which has cost more than £38m, was established in 2016 to investigate his alleged activities, and those of former British army and RUC intelligence handlers.

Its 208-page report by the former chief constable of Bedfordshire Jon Boutcher has resulted in no prosecution. Boutcher has since become chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

During the press conference at the report’s publication, Boutcher paid tribute to the dignity of the families of victims. He said the Kenova team, now led by Sir Iain Livingstone, a retired chief constable of Police Scotland, could now proceed to its final report.

He condemned the IRA’s actions aimed at subjugating its own community and added that the security forces were often presented with dilemmas for which there was no right answer, but that there was a lack of proper oversight. He said that was “a serious failure” and murders that should have been prevented “were allowed to take place”.

In the report, Boutcher says he and his investigation were “troubled” by some “extremely fractious spells” in extracting information from the Security Service, MI5.

He concludes that “not sharing intelligence with investigators or sharing it in a limited fashion” is “not compatible with the requirements of an ECHR-compliant investigation and must stop”.

He says the public does not expect institutions to be infallible but the security forces seem to have been motivated by the view that they need to be protected from criticism so as not to damage public confidence in them.

He is also critical of “the continuing failure of governments, public authorities, political parties and those who fought in the Troubles to acknowledge the hurt inflicted on the families of those who were murdered, or to provide them with a meaningful examination of the circumstances of their death”.

He describes the IRA’s actions as “the most shameful evil I have encountered”.

Boutcher suggests that 21 June, the longest day of the year, should be “designated as a day when we remember those lost, injured or harmed as a result of the Troubles”.

Kevin Winters, the solicitor for 12 of the families of Stakeknife’s victims described the report as “a damning indictment of the state.” and aded that the state could have intervened to save lives.

“That this didn’t happen is legally and morally reprehensible”, he added, “We are left with the horrendous conclusion that both state and the IRA were co-conspirators in the murder of citizens.”

He said the decision not to name Scaapticci as Stakeknife was difficult for some families but they hoped that would change.

Last week, the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland said there was insufficient evidence to prosecute seven alleged IRA members and five former soldiers who worked with the army’s Force Research Unit.

Three of the soldiers had been handlers and the other two were more senior.

Scappaticci, who died last year in England, aged 77, is the only person to be found guilty of any offence by the investigators. In 2018, he was given a three-month suspended sentence after officers from Operation Kenova found extreme pornographic images on his laptop when they searched his home.

It has been alleged that Scappaticci’s handlers allowed him to take part in criminal activities that went well beyond what was permitted in the relevant guidance they were supposed to follow.

UK Home Office guidelines state that an agent should “not actively engage in planning or committing” crimes and should play only “a minor role”.

The guidelines also state: “The need to protect an informant does not justify granting him immunity from arrest or prosecution for the crime if he fully participates in it with the requisite intent.”

[beardedmrbean]

A man has appeared in court for the second time in a day charged with the murders of a woman and two of her daughters in a crossbow attack at their home.

Carol Hunt, 61, Hannah Hunt, 28, and Louise Hunt, 25, were found fatally injured in Bushey, Hertfordshire, on 9 July.

Kyle Clifford, 26, from Enfield, north London, was arrested after being found injured in a cemetery near his home on 10 July, Westminster Magistrates' Court heard.

The defendant, who was also charged with false imprisonment and two counts of possession of offensive weapons, was remanded in custody after an appearance at the Royal Courts of Justice, London.

The victims were the wife and daughters of BBC racing commentator John Hunt.

Police had previously been unable to interview Mr Clifford while he received treatment in hospital, where he remained under arrest.

A brief court hearing at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Tuesday morning was told the weapons Mr Clifford was accused of having at the Hunt family home were an MX-405 compact crossbow and a 10in (25cm) "butcher's knife".

Police and the ambulance service had been called to the property by Hannah Hunt, prosecutor David Burns said.

"Police attended the property - they found the front door was open," Mr Burns said.

The court heard that Louise had been found tied up. She had been shot with a crossbow.

Hannah Hunt had also been shot with a crossbow and their mother Carol had been stabbed with a knife and suffered multiple injuries, the court was told.

"They found Hannah Hunt lying in the doorway. She had been shot by a crossbow in the chest," Mr Burns said.

He added that Carol Hunt had suffered "multiple" knife wounds.

During the Westminster court hearing, Mr Clifford, appearing via video link from Kempston police station, Bedfordshire, nodded when asked to confirm his name and address.

District Judge Paul Goldspring remanded him in custody ahead of the hearing at the High Court on Tuesday afternoon.

Mr Clifford later appeared in front of High Court judge Mr Justice Johnson, again via video link.

No trial date was set because inquiries were being made about a suitable court for him to be tried in as a wheelchair user.

In a previous statement, Mr Hunt and surviving daughter Amy said their devastation at the killings "cannot be put into words".

A fundraiser set up to support them saw more than £120,000 in donations pledged.

Det Ch Insp Nick Gardner, of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Major Crime Unit, said: "We have been working hard to gather as much evidence as possible and establish the full circumstances of what happened that day.

"Although it has taken some time to reach this stage, we can now move forward with the judicial process and seek justice for their family."

[chasedalek]

Movie Black Dalek (1966)

as seen in “Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D” (1966)

Name : Black Dalek

Other Aliases : Second-in-Command

First Appearance : Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D (1966)

Latest Appearance : Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D (1966)

Place of Origin : Skaro

The Black Dalek is second-in-command of the Daleks to the Gold Dalek. It is seen to be partially in charge of the 2150 A.D invasion of Earth.

The Black Dalek is seen operating on the Dalek ship in Bedfordshire where the human slaves were mining - (see Gold Dalek for more). The Black Dalek is later seen patrolling London alongside the Red Dalek and some robomen were they mistake the TARDIS for your average police box. The Black Dalek informed that the Earth was ready for the explosive capsule and oversaw the preparations with the Gold and Red Daleks. The Black Dalek brought Dr. Who and his companions to the Gold Dalek, the Gold Dalek intended to have them exterminated. Dr. Who took control of the ship and ordered an attack on the Daleks, although the Daleks regained control Dr. Who escaped the ship. As commanded by the Gold Dalek the Daleks were heading to the ship. The magnetic forces of the Earth were messed up, resulting in the Daleks losing control of themselves. The Black Dalek falls down the shaft the capsule had decended down, along with the Red Dalek leaving them assumed to be dead.

[hadnewscom]

Police Discover Suspect Concealed Within Sofa - Video-In a surprising turn of events, Bedfordshire Police officers had to think outside the box – or rather, inside the sofa – when searching for a suspect during a recent warrant execution in England. According to a statement released by the police

[newsokgr]

Ένοπλοι πυροβολούν κατά της αστυνομίας ενώ κρατούσαν όμηρο τον οδηγό που παρέδιδε «κρύο κεμπάπ»

Τραμπούκοι πυροβόλησαν με τουφέκι τους αστυνομικούς ενώ κρατούσαν όμηρο έναν οδηγό σε πακέτο που διήρκεσε 14 ώρες (Εικόνα: Bedfordshire Police) Αυτή είναι η στιγμή που δύο άνδρες πυροβόλησαν εναντίον της αστυνομίας ενώ κρατούσαν όμηρο έναν οδηγό σε πακέτο για 14 ώρες μετά την παράδοση ενός «κρύου κεμπάπ». Η αστυνομία του Bedfordshire φαίνεται να περι��άλλει την πολυκατοικία όπου οι δύο δράστες, ο…

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Bedfordshire Police said the man was detained as a precaution and investigations so far suggest the blaze started accidentally due to a vehicle fault.

[ukrfeminism]

TW: rape, institutional sexism

5 minute read

A serving Metropolitan Police officer can be revealed as one of Britain’s most prolific rapists after admitting more than 80 sex offences spanning almost 20 years.

David Carrick, 48, committed dozens of depraved attacks on at least 13 women, in Hertfordshire and London between 2003 and 2020, despite being employed as an armed officer responsible for protecting Parliament, government offices and other high-profile locations.

He used his position as a police officer to gain the trust of his victims, sometimes flashing his warrant card and telling them they would be “safe” with him.

But after attacking them Carrick would say they would never be believed, because he was a policeman and it would be his word against theirs.

Scotland Yard bosses have apologised to his victims after admitting missing numerous opportunities to prevent his offending and failing to act on repeated complaints about his behaviour.

It can now be revealed that Carrick came to the attention of the Metropolitan Police and other forces on nine occasions for a range of offences including domestic abuse, burglary, harassment and assault.

Three months before he was eventually charged, he was arrested on suspicion of rape but at no point was he ever suspended by his force.

Met 'truly sorry' after missed opportunities

Assistant Commissioner Barbara Gray said: “On behalf of the Metropolitan Police, I want to apologise to the women who have suffered at the hands of David Carrick.”

She added: “We should have spotted his pattern of abusive behaviour and because we didn’t, we missed opportunities to remove him from the organisation.

“We are truly sorry that being able to continue to use his role as a police officer may have prolonged the suffering of his victims.”

But Ms Gray stopped short of admitting that the Met bore some responsibility for Carrick being able to carry out his reign of abuse.

Last month during an appearance at the Old Bailey, Carrick admitted 43 separate charges but pleaded not guilty to a further seven.

He had been due to stand trial in February but, during a hearing at Southwark Crown Court, he changed his plea and admitted the outstanding charges.

In total, he has now pleaded guilty to 47 rapes, nine sexual assaults, three counts of coercive control, two of false imprisonment and a string of other offences.

Some of his attacks took place within relationships while others were against women he met socially or on internet dating sites.

'Prolific and callous'

Detective Chief Inspector Iain Moor from the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Major Crime Unit, who was the Senior Investigating Officer in the case, said the sheer number of offences Carrick had admitted demonstrated his “prolific and callous” nature.

He said: “Whilst he was not a man that stalked the streets scouting for victims – he invested time in developing relationships with women to sustain his appetite for degradation and control.”

As well as pleading guilty to 25 separate rape offences, Carrick sexually assaulted, beat, humiliated and controlled his victims, banning the from eating and even locking one, naked, in a cupboard under his staircase for up to ten hours.

Shilpa Shah from the Crown Prosecution Service said: “He controlled their daily routines, what they ate, where they slept.

“He would say they were fat so they were not allowed to eat that day, or that they could only eat a piece of apple.

“He would tell them to stay in bed all day, because they were going to be having sex all night.”

'He thrived on humiliating his victims'

Mr Moor added: “The coercive nature of his offending undermined his victims in the most destructive way. He thrived on humiliating his victims and cleverly used his professional position to intimate there was no point in them trying to seek help because they would never be believed.

“It is unbelievable to think these offences could have been committed by a serving police officer.”

Carrick, who spent a year in the Army, joined the Met in 2001 despite having previously been reported for domestic abuse and burglary.

In November 2002, just over a year after joining the force and while he was still in his probation period, he was accused of actual bodily harm following an attack on a girlfriend who wanted to end their relationship.

She reported the matter to his bosses in Scotland Yard but no action was taken against him.

In 2004 he was involved in another suspected domestic incident during an argument with a girlfriend, but the Met’s department of professional standards did not even look into the matter.

In 2009 he passed enhanced assessments in order to qualify as a firearms officer, but within months of being handed a weapon was accused of domestically abusing a girlfriend.

Hertfordshire Constabulary investigated the matter and spoke to the victim and the third party who had reported the offence, but neither wished to proceed and the case was dropped.

The Met Police was informed but took no action against Carrick. The victim is one of the 13 women Carrick has now pleaded guilty to attacking.

In 2011 he should have undergone his ten-year vetting refresher but extraordinarily this did not take place for a further six years - a period when he committed a string of offences.

In 2016 one of his ex-partners reported him to Hampshire Police after becoming convinced he was stalking her by 'ghost calling' her at work.

The matter was investigated but was dropped because he was not directly linked to the phone in question.

In 2017 he was spoken to by Thames Valley Police officers after being thrown out of a nightclub in Reading for being drunk and aggressive. 

Carrick showed the officers his Met warrant card and rather than being arrested was allowed to go on his way. No action was ever taken against him.

In 2017 he underwent enhanced Counter Terrorism Check (CTC) vetting but no intelligence cross-checks took place during the process and he passed.

In 2019 he was again reported to Hertfordshire Police over allegations of assault and criminal damage. 

It followed a row with a woman during which he grabbed her around the neck and dragged her out of his house. 

Officers from Hertfordshire Police spoke to the victim but no further action was taken against Carrick.

Scotland Yard’s department of professional standards was informed and the matter was sent to his own Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection PaDP unit to examine.

It was swiftly determined that the matter did not constitute gross misconduct and he was simply offered some words of advice, suggesting in future he told his bosses about such off-duty incidents.

Disturbing failures

One of the most disturbing failures in the Met’s handling of the case came in July 2021, when a former girlfriend made an allegation of rape against Carrick.

The complaint was made to Sussex Police as part of an unrelated matter and was passed to Hertfordshire Constabulary.

Carrick was arrested on July 13 2021 and Scotland Yard was also informed that one of its officers was being questioned on suspicion of a serious sex offence.

The victim later withdrew the complaint and no further action was taken by the Hertfordshire Force.

A misconduct investigation was opened by the Met but extraordinarily Carrick was not suspended but simply based on “restricted duties” for several weeks.

It was subsequently decided he had no case to answer and was cleared to begin carrying a firearm again. Carrick has now pleaded guilty to that rape.  

Carrick was eventually caught in October 2021 when a woman came forward to say she had been raped by him after they had gone out on an internet date.

He was charged with rape and, following publicity about the case, more women came forward with similar allegations.

Mr Moor said the investigation had “snowballed”, but he still believed there were more victims out there and he urged them to come forward.

The case raises serious questions for the Metropolitan Police coming just weeks after a review by Dame Louise Casey found huge flaws in the force’s misconduct system.

'Slipping through the net'

Andrea Simon, Director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition said: “This is an institution in crisis. That Carrick’s alarming pattern of behaviour was known to the Met, and they failed to take appropriate action, demonstrates just how broken the systems which are supposed to keep the public safe from perpetrators of rape and abuse are."

She added: “Police officers hold a particular position of power and authority over the public and as such must be held to the very highest standards of accountability and public scrutiny. Yet we see an institution that isn’t addressing the most serious sexual offending within its own ranks.

“Even when officers are reported for sexual misconduct they often evade disciplinary action and remain in their jobs. 

“The police are failing to look at patterns of behaviour, meaning repeat perpetrators slip through the net or can get away with a slap on the wrist. 

“It is imperative that forces do not sit by and wait for victims or witnesses to report - they must take proactive steps to prevent police officers abusing their positions for sexual purposes, which is shockingly the largest form of corruption in UK policing.”

'B-----d Dave'

Carrick boasted to some of his victims that his nickname among his colleagues in armed policing was “bastard Dave”, suggesting his reputation at work was questionable.

Born in Salisbury into a military family, Carrick never married but had dozens of short-term girlfriends, according to neighbours in the smart street in Stevenage where he lived.

One said: "I only spoke to him to say hello - he's always got a different girl around there. He's not married and has no kids, you just see different women all the time, no men.

"It's been years they've been coming around - one a month - they move out as quickly as they move in.

"He just seems to find one, one after the other - it was a standing joke among neighbours.

Another local resident said Carrick was into bodybuilding and had a home gym in his spare bedroom. He also had a large pet snake, which he used to pose with.

He said: "He's just a womaniser but I don't know much else about him. He used to say hello every now and again. The women were all different, short, tall - there was no one type - and around his age.

"I'm not being funny but he's a policeman - it's disgusting.  I wouldn't have thought that of him - he did used to big up that he worked for the Met and worked on big jobs. He used to come past with his rucksack on and talk about his day, 'I've been at the London Bridge attack', etc." 

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New Post has been published on https://petn.ws/pd0Fk

Heroic police dog chases down suspects after they ran from stolen car

A heroic police dog helped to chase down two suspected car thieves after they tried to escape from police in Bedfordshire. Officers in Kempston – two miles from Bedford town centre – spotted a car they believed to be stolen while on patrol overnight. Three males are said to have jumped from the vehicle and […]

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