In the aftermath of the G20 protests many predicted that no sort of justice could be expected from either the Independent Police Complaints commission (IPCC), the courts or the Met when it comes to holding the police force to account.  The recent ruling that Sergeat Delroy Smellie is not guilty of assault for his attack on Nicola Fisher is yet another indication that there is no accountability within British policing.

You can read the full piece here.

Big Stories

Straw admits Lockerbie trade link

Trade and oil played a part in the decision to include the Lockerbie bomber in a prisoner transfer deal, Jack Straw has admitted.

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, the UK justice secretary said trade was “a very big part” of the 2007 talks that led to the prisoner deal with Libya.

However, Mr Straw’s spokesman accused the press of “outrageous” innuendo. (BBC)

G20 papers over cracks on bank capital, pay

The G20 made progress on Saturday in toughening up financial rules but vague compromises over bank capital and pay curbs indicate that fundamental issues remain unresolved.

The crash of Lehman Bros that brought the world’s financial system to its knees last September was uppermost in minds at the April G20 meeting, which adopted pledges to make it harder for banks to mess up economies in future.

Translating pledges into concrete action is proving to be more painstaking as vested national interests emerge and economic recovery takes the heat out of pressures to reform.

Still, the mood music at Saturday’s meeting contrasted with the tense summit five months ago when fear stalked the corridors of governments and banks were on tenterhooks as to their fate.

(Reuters)

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

• Paul Walter explains the most important thing he’ll ever write.
• Stephen Glenn writes about men with eating disorders.

(Both of these posts have been selected from those which appeared on Lib Dem Blogs on Saturday. To read more from other Liberal Democrat blogs, take a look at the Lib Dem Blogs website and to see what Lib Dems have been saying on Twitter, take a look at Liberal Tweets.)

Sunday Bonus

Men eating chocolate. It’s what YouTube was invented for.

Why does this matter? Well, it’s because the police and the IPCC (Independent Police Complaints Commission, who are investigating Ian Tomlinson’s death) have both said there’s no CCTV footage of the incident.

I’ve previously blogged about the contrast between the earlier very positive police comments about how efficient and detailed their CCTV coverage of the demonstration was and these current comments about there being none of the key incident.

On top of that, it does seem rather a stretch to think that all three of the cameras identified by Ill and Ancient were not working that day (or were pointing in a different direction, but subsequently turned round by the time the photomontage was put together). Certainly as the IPCC news release from 6 April confirms, there were other CCTV cameras in the immediate vicinity which were working, which would appear to rule out explanations such as a power cut across the area of a blanket systems failure.

So all a bit rum.

The IPCC themselves haven’t helped matters by first having their chair Nick Hardwick tell Channel 4 News that there were given CCTV footage by The Guardian. Then when it was pointed out in the interview that The Guardian’s footage wasn’t CCTV and the point was pressed, Nick Hardwick said instead that, “there were no cameras in the location” (which isn’t accurate). Finally, the IPCC subsequently told Channel 4 that there were cameras, but they weren’t working – a third version of events.

Channel 4 rather generously describes this third version has having “confirmed” Nick  Hardwick’s earlier comments, though if you read the quotes and watch the clip on their website it is clear that there were three different versions run through.

One thing at least is clear from all this: given all these oddities, the IPCC report is going to have to go into a lot of solid detail on the CCTV evidence to have a decent chance of gaining public confidence for its findings.

Nick Hardwick, chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, gives the first interview about the death of Ian Tomlinson to Krishnan Guru-Murthy.

Hardwick said of the assault:

“We don’t have CCTV footage of the incident… there is no CCTV footage, there were no cameras in the location where he was assaulted.”

Speaking to More 4 News, the IPCC confirmed Hardwick’s comment, saying that the CCTV cameras overlooking the incident were not working.

reminds me of how, before the story of the police’s connect to Ian Tomlinson’s death came out, the police were talking about how good their CCTV coverage had been:

Commander Simon O’Brien, of the Met, said small pockets of criminals among the 4,000-strong crowd were to blame for the trouble yesterday…

“There were small groups charging forwards and backwards into police lines. It did seem to us, from CCTV and police on the scene, that they tried to find a way to ramp up the protest and hijack it into violence.”

O’Brien said police had collected footage from helitelly, the force’s nickname for CCTV from powerful helicopter cameras, adding that those identified should expect a “knock on the door”.

Ah well.

LORD MYNERS, the minister in charge of the government’s assault on tax havens, has used a blind trust to conceal £250,000 of his own money in an offshore shelter.

Details of the secret holding have been obtained by The Sunday Times as G20 leaders gather in London pledging to stamp out tax abuses.

Myners transferred 500,000 of his own shares in the Ermitage hedge fund, based in Jersey, into a blind trust when he became a minister in October …

He owned the shares while overseeing price-sensitive policy decisions. During this time he met Jersey officials who now say they have “nothing to fear” from any tax haven crackdown …

Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat MP, said: “Here is a minister calling for greater financial transparency and the end of tax havens while concealing his own tax haven investment. It’s blatant hypocrisy.”