Another libel lawyer’s letter arrived late this afternoon from Clarke Willmott for the Quilliam Foundation, funded by your taxes (if you are a UK taxpayer). As with their first one and their email, I give it in full so you can see their side of the story:
They now acknowledge that they only filed their accounts six days after I blogged that they had not filed them – a fact they left out of their first letter. They do say that they had an extension to file late from Companies House. That seems their one good point. The rest is easily refuted. I have replied thus:
Dear Michael Clarke,
I refute your points entirely. My blog posts are part of a wider political debate surrounding the Quilliam Foundation Ltd. The view that Mr Husain has swung from one extremist view to the opposite has been very widely reported and deplored in blogs and on newspapers. Anyone who one year supports Islamic terrorism, and the next year supports the invasion of Iraq and the occupation of Afghanistan, cannot be fairly described as stable. Indeed the one thing both viewpoints have in common is a support for killing people for political ends.
The view that the Quilliam Foundation is counterproductive in achieving its aims and thus a waste of taxpayers’ money, and that its Directors are over-remunerated, is also so widely expressed as to be the received wisdom about the organization. Indeed in paying a social parasite like a libel lawyer, it seems only to confirm that Quilliam has more taxpayers’ money than sense.
I am very sorry that you wish to waste more taxpayers’ money in trying to defend Quilliam’s non-existent good name. Of course you will profit personally: why should you not get on the taxpayer funded gravy train too? If you wish to claim this particular action is financed by other donations, I refer you to the concept of fungibility.
I view your proposed action as an appallingly illiberal attempt by a government funded organization to silence an outlet for political dissent in the UK.
I also insist that you tell me whether you had advance knowledge of the plan for Mr Ed Jagger to telephone me falsely pretending to wish to be able to make a donation, apparently in order to attempt to elicit financial information. If you do not refute in simple terms any involvement, I shall report you to your professional body. Please tell me if that is the Law Society or the Bar Council. I expect you have an obligation when asked to give information on where to direct a professional complaint.
If you wish to serve papers on me, you will find me for the next three weeks at C878/3, North Ridge, Accra. After that I shall be at home at 30 Whitehall Gardens, Acton, London, W3 9RD. My wife is now there alone with our young baby, and any action by you or your clients which upsets or harasses her before my return is something which I will take very, very seriously indeed and I would take every possible and imaginative action within the law to ensure that you would greatly regret.
Thank you for recommending me to get a solicitor. Sadly unlike your clients I am not rolling in taxpayers’ cash and I have no money for a solicitor. As Mr Jagger telephoned me to offer a donation, perhaps you might ask him if he could fund a solicitor for me? That would be kind.
I have nothing more to say to you and will enter no further correspondence with you, nor read any further correspondence by you. Please stop this pathetic and futile attempt at bullying and go to court. I have no doubt that Jack Straw (who you will be aware sacked me as British Ambassador precisely for not holding the views your clients are so well paid to propagandise) will make sure you get allocated a judge entirely on your side.
Craig
The only sad thing about this episode for me (other than the waste of time and energy and a certain distress to my family) is that the general opinion of Quilliam is so low, this appalling behaviour can’t make them much worse thought of.
Craig – Ruth may be right in her comment that your “blog must be a real concern to MI5 and MI6”. I would suggest that one of their tactics may be to tie your time up dealing with smaller issues that aren’t of much importance to them; so that you have less time to delve into issues that really do concern them. For example, publishing some of my comments will not have endeared you to MI5/6 and writing articles headlined “Another Old Etonian Wanker Calls Me a Liar” will have deeply offended MI5/6’s masters in the establishment.
I can tell from the favorable commentary on prominent American blogs, that your recent trip to the US was a great success. They will also be concerned about that. Roderick Russell
Craig,
Your home looks really nice on Streetview. My Mum used to live close by in 1920. I took her around all the places she lived as a Child when she was about 80 years old…
Here’s some photos of my home town
It’s gone really upmarket since Norman Tebbit told me to get on my bike…The rest of the UK soon to follow this wonderful progression from poverty to wealth – with everyone living contented lives in happinness and peace…
Strangely enough Oldham is the only place where I have driven a brand new car out of the showroom – Morris Marina 1.8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ar1MJJUwGQ
Tony
From Snowmail:
Mention the word libel and you might think of celebrities suing tabloid newspapers over scandalous allegations.
But a coalition of journalists, human rights lawyers and freedom of information campaigners are saying the English libel laws must be changed because they are stifling free speech.
In one particular aspect of the problem doctors and scientists are being threatened with crippling legal action if they speak about adverse findings from their research.
And English laws are attracting rich foreign businesses that see our courts as a good way to see off their detractors – even if neither party is based in this country.
We have a rare interview with one of the senior lawyers at Carter-Ruck, who recently caused much controversy with the Trafigura super-injunction that nearly saw the media banned from reporting a parliamentary question.
CHANNEL 4 NEWS – 7.30pm tonight
**Re: Charles at November 14, 2009 2:44 PM** 5 posts up
I think this sweeps away any possibility of libel regards the filing of company accounts. It demonstrates that QF reacted to Craig’s 5 November blog article, by procuring a time extension. At the time of the article their accounts were OVERDUE. A question to ask: did they incur a penalty for lateness? And if not, how so? Watch carefully now for a nominal fine to appear on the company’s record.
Is there anything else left to defend?
The interesting thing about these parasites – these leeches – growing fatter and fatter geeding on us hosts – is that we tolerate them just as an annoyance most of the time…
What they don’t seem to realise, in their happy frenzy of feeding on taxpayers money – is the nature of the beast they are feeding on…
Sure they think we are all sheep, and will continue to take their blood sucking…
But some of us Sheep are Really Sharks compiling a database – about them – and there is a limit to the amount of blood sucking we will take. You Really Do Not Want Us To Turn Nasty.
Tony
I clearly don’t understand libel law.
I always thought that if it walked like a duck and quacked like a duck, then it was a duck. It would appear that libel lawyers also require that the matter of the bill be taken into account.
Hey Craig, did you have that Anjem Choudury in the back of yer cab recently? You’ve got loads in common.
Good luck, Craig. I know many thousands of people are behind you, all of whom regard the Q Foundation as utterly vile.
Quilliam has close to zero support among the Muslims (the same Muslims it has been tasked/pimped to “fix”). The more they do stupid things like this, the more they will lose the support that comes from non-Muslim quarters (the ones whose support really doesn’t “strategically” help it anyway).
The charlatans who run this are just part of the ex-extremist cottage factory that goes from one end of the spectrum to the more profitable other end.
I wrote about them in this post here where I expose them for their deceptive practices. Unfortunately, I am too far removed from UK to be sued, otherwise it would have been an important and beneficial exercise to take them on and in the process, to hopefully expose their little tax-payer-supported game.
Quilliam Foundation’s Fear-Mongering “Alert” on Islam Channel (GPU, Yasir Qadhi, Bunglawala & Azad Ali)
http://bit.ly/2AmkEC
Nice one bro !!