Battle joined at last in Caligula Britannica

In one day today, December 13th 2012, civil war finally broke out between those who would subvert everything civilised in Britain, and those of us beyond Party lines who are tired of dissembling bollocks used as the means to undesirable ends. Justice Leveson retired a safe distance away to Australia before openly threatening freedom of speech on the web. Sally Bercow hired the ravenously carnivorous Carter-Ruck to take on Alistair McAlpine. And Scotland Yard announced the existence of its Operation Fairbank. This last may not be a bid to make banks fair, but it is a sign that someone along the Thin Blue Line has regained at least a fragment of the plot.

The law should be enforced against tweeters and bloggers to avoid a drop in mainstream journalistic standards , Lord Justice Leveson  said today, 18,000 miles away in Melbourne. Leveson seems not to appreciate that his Enquiry was set up to rectify the fact that journalistic standards have been heading for the sewer ever since Rupert Murdoch arrived in the UK over forty years ago.

Lord Justice Leveson is taking part in a down-under freebie jolly lecture tour. Although he has ruled out commenting on his recently published Memoirs of a Spineless Humbug, the man who thinks Jeremy Hunt ‘fair and unbiased’ on the subject of Newscorp clearly feels no such need for discretion in relation to the internet, which he dismissed today as “electronic pub gossip”.

You will laugh out loud at this one, so stay close to the pissoir: during a speech at the University of Melbourne, he insisted there was an important difference between mainstream journalists with “a powerful reputation for accuracy” and bloggers and tweeters who were clearly some form of sub-human lowlife interested only in tearing up the press release and looking for the truth. I must say, the powerful reputation for accuracy fantasy brings a whole range of words to mind. I’m getting, er, Sun, Mail, Dacre, Guardian, Hitler’s Memoirs, Elton John’s rent boys, Piers Moron…..and many another scriveners’ measurement of The Naked Truth.

Meanwhile, in the continuing fight to leave no reptiles in the wake of ambulances, Commons Speaker wifey Sally Bercow has instructed lawyers Carter-Ruck to defend her against Lord MaChiavelline’s ludicrous shot across her delightful bows. The well-known Italian decorator was hoping to net another fifty grand, but sadly for him and his bumptious conveyancing clerk, this time costs will be involved.

McAlpine’s libel claim against La Bercow is the first sign that the dispute could result in a trial at the high court, and a jolly good thing too. The objective bystander, meanwhile, is left with the same choice democrats faced in 1939 between the Nazis and the Soviets.

Equally encouraging (but it’s early days yet) is the news that Scotland Yard detectives are looking into allegations of senior politicians abusing children in the 1980s, and getting clean away with it. During past weeks, officers from the Metropolitan Police’s child abuse investigation team have interviewed several adults who claim that they were sexually assaulted as children by MPs in a paedophile ring. The team was set up following accusations made by Labour MP Tom Watson in the House Commons some weeks ago, since when the silence from this chap has been deafening.

The Met operation – codenamed Fairbank – has been working in secret at the headquarters of the Child Abuse Investigation Team at the Empress State Building in Earl’s Court, London for some time already. The Empress State Building is of course the British sister construction to the American Empire State Building in New York, being only smaller and less perfectly formed. For an easy comparative parallel, think Barack Obama standing next to William Hague.

Earlier at The Slog – Why everyone’s a kiddy-fiddling embezzler in Scotland, allegedly