Bernard Hogan-Howe was an abysmal London police chief who retires an obscenely rich man
Grotesque insult to taxpayers that such failure is rewarded with an incredible pension
Failure of a cop
BERNARD Hogan-Howe was an abysmal London police chief who retires an obscenely rich man at just 58 leaving a trail of wrecked lives in his wake.
What a grotesque insult to taxpayers that such failure is rewarded with an incredible pension of £181,500 a year.
Football’s naked greed was exposed this week. What of the greed of those like Hogan-Howe amassing immense fortunes in the public sector?
Consider his record of spectacular and costly blunders: Operation Midland, the “VIP paedophiles” witch-hunt his force relentlessly pursued having blindly swallowed a fantasist’s lies.
The Plebgate saga, in which the Met misused the law to hack Sun reporters’ phones and expose its own officers after they freely leaked a political scandal unassailably in the public interest.
Their careers and pensions were destroyed for embarrassing Hogan-Howe’s force. That’s what he REALLY considered a crime.
He had Sun journalists arrested at dawn during the Operation Elveden fiasco. All but one was cleared. That single conviction is being appealed.
And Hogan-Howe all but ended contact between cops and reporters which had helped fight crime for decades.
If it is true London Mayor Sadiq Khan can’t stand him, we commend his taste.
The capital is well rid of him.
End this farce
THE vast historic child abuse inquiry is falling apart and should be scrapped.
It has gone through three chairwomen and now its two top lawyers.
It has achieved nothing and we suspect never will.
Its scope is absurd — 60 years of alleged abuse right across British society.
We all sympathise with the victims.
But no one will ever get closure from this unmanageable probe.
The Government needs the courage to pull the plug.
Clueless pair
Cabinet reject Morgan sneers that Theresa May has no exit plan and should not let some “senior ministers keen on a hard Brexit” lead the debate.
But, Mrs Morgan, David Davis is Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union. Leading the debate is his job.
Yours, after your sacking, is to represent Loughborough (which voted Leave).
Clarke reckons “nobody in Government has the first idea” how to proceed.
How would he know? Like Morgan, he’s no longer in the loop.
The negotiating plan will be complex — but we do know one thing:
Brexit Ministers would be crazy to breathe a word of it to Westminster’s loudest Europhile foghorns.