Just When You Think It can't Get Any Worse At The BBC, Step Up David Mellor & Andrew Neil

Andrew Neil

Today's Sunday Politics show with Andrew Neil was a revelation, no sorry scrub that, it was diabolical and downright appalling inhumane festering garbage.

You would have to be on Mars to have missed the BBC imploding before our very eyes, or the prime minister, David Cameron and others indulging in overt displays of public hand wringing, angst and "moral outrage" over Philip Schofield's supposed ambush of Cameron on Live morning TV. If there was a gold medal for showing moral indignation then David Cameron would be wearing that medal round his fat neck now, he played his part well.
The cause of this indignation was as we all now know (although didn't at the time) the mistaken identity of Lord McAlpine. The odd thing is that Lord McAlpine seems to have taken this well reacted and cleared the matter up without once reverting to Cameron's faux displays of anger etc. The man most to lose seems to understand the awful dark place Mr Steve Messham has resided in for 20 years, not so our prime minister, who decided to carry out an ambush all of his own and hijack Lord McAlpine's dignity and cash in on it for a few cheap political points.

That is the background. This morning on Sunday Politics Andrew Neil first decided to try and humiliate the Labour Deputy Leader, Harriet Harman and tried to attack Tom Watson MP and Deputy chairman of the Labour party, through Ms Harman. Mr Watson's crime? Was a couple of weeks ago to ask the Prime Minister a question in the House about a paedophile ring connected to a previous government, like the BBC, like Mr Messham, Like the Newsnight programme, Mr Watson did NOT name names. Please read here Mr Watson's account. Apparently Mr Neil doesn't seem to think that Mr Watson should ask these questions because he is Deputy Chairman of the Labour party! However, Mr Watson was told something which he reported to the House and the PM and the police, one suspects that if he did none of these things and something untoward had happened Neil would have then attacked him for not asking the questions! In any case, Andrew Neil seemed more intent on blaming Watson for all the ills fallen on the PM and the BBC, he more or less inferred this when questioning Harriet Harman. Ms Harman responded several times by actually telling Andrew Neil that this matter had been reported to the police so was not in a position to speak about it, but Neil was having none of that. Ms Harman finished with saying that whatever happens we cannot have politicians influencing broadcast decisions or that which is published in the press and she is right! However, perhaps someone ought to tell David Cameron and BBC Trust Chairman, Tory Peer Lord Chris Patten that, because having a non partisan BBC seems to have escaped them both!

David Mellor

The Harman interview passed and then appears David Mellor the former MP and Conservative minister and former Tory Chief secretary to the Treasury and National Heritage Secretary in John Major's government. he was forced to resign as a minister after a series of sordid scandals and questionable freebies in 1992. He was an MP until 1997 when he left parliament.

Today this obnoxious turd of man surpassed himself, when he said live on BBC TV on the Andrew Neil Sunday Politics show that a man who had been raped and sexually abused all his childhood while supposed in the care of the state in a children's home was "a weirdo" Mellor also poured scorn on this man's testament about alleged police involvement. The basis he alleges this was a story that appeared in the Daily Mail attacking this victim of child sexual abuse. Andrew Neil chose to allow Mellor's comments to go unchallenged and said absolutely nothing - astonishing! The harm this could cause victims of abuse who all fear they will not be believed should they pluck up enough courage to tell is immeasurable!

On reading the report in the Mail, I became very angry on the behalf of Mr Messham, there is nothing in that story that does not fit in with the way survivors and those affected by childhood sexual abuse sometimes react to certain situations. In fact I think this story in itself should be reported to the Press Complaints Committee. It makes much about Messham being charged with fraud, however read on and you find he is acquitted, so in that case why mention it? Why would the BBC report this when Messham was acquitted? There was absolutely no need to. From reading this story it becomes clear that Mr Messham is a victim not only of childhood sexual abuse, he is also a victim of a political and legal cover-up. He wrongly identified Lord McAlpine because he was shown a picture of Lord McAlpine and was told by police that this was the man who abused him. The onus should now fall on the police to root out who told Mr Messham this and discover why he was told this. I would hazard a guess that one way of shutting victims of abuse up is to totally confuse them and if they do tell make what they are saying appear like a pack of lies or fantasies. What better way of doing this then telling a victim the wrong name? How many times did this go on? How many times has this man and others been deliberately confused to make their statements appear not credible?  Turning them into "unreliable" witnesses?

I believe what Mr Messham is saying and he must be listened to and what he says fully investigated, this man has suffered enough and this witness tampering must stop and it must stop now! Mr Messham is not the only one to be made to appear like this, there are a great many other damaged people, victims of childhood sexual abuse when placed in a children's home, they were mentally, physically and sexually abused by many of the people charged with caring for them and protecting them and when they reported it they were not believed. They were refused permission to tell their stories in a court of law because of the deliberately narrow confines of the Inquiry set up by the then Conservative Welsh Secretary, William Hague. One survivor of such abuse at the same Bryn Estyn Children's Home is Keith Gregory, who reports to this very day he can hear the screams and cries of the children placed in that care.

David Mellor and Andrew Neil may want to whitewash over this, but I and the majority of others will not allow it to happen. I believe that David Mellor should be sacked from his job at LBC because apparently he repeated the same insensitive rubbish on there and I also believe that Andrew Neil should receive an official warning for his crass behaviour on his show today, that wasn't journalism it was using victims, the vulnerable as punch bags to do what David Cameron has been doing all week, to try and divert attention away from the true story.