Well Done, Coalition
The only people I hear sobbing over Reverend Gamble's departure are the self-same advocacy groups who have made such a commercial killing 'partnering' with his congregation at CEOP over the past few years. As usual, they employ highly emotive and wilfully misleading terminology to describe the Reverend as nothing less than a saint. But I guess it's kind hard to wave goodbye to the goose that laid quite so many golden eggs. Times were so good back in the good old days at the height of the Paedogeddon, after all... it was the gift that just kept giving.
The Operation Ore class action comes to court next month (finally). Big Jim is likely to feature prominently as it was he who led the entire fiasco from the start. That he should fall on his sword just about now is...well, let's just say it's 'interesting'. He does appear to have rather a lot of rather awkward questions to answer.
For a fledgling CEOP, Gamble as CEO (it really is a commercial outfit, albeit one which also enjoys huge public handouts) was a star performer - his well-rehearsed patter was so very effective at dazzling the media with endlessly sensational soundbites - not one of which he was ever required to explain or to prove. The Reverend could say what he wanted, claim what he wanted, and threaten whomever he wished - all with impunity. The media (El Reg excepted, of course) rarely if ever took him to task for his increasingly hysterical utterances. With him, it was all about perception - and keeping the moral crisis high on the public agenda was an effective business plan during the cosy NuLabour years of huge (£multi-million) public handouts. How things change.
No doubt at some future date he'll receive his gong for 'services to child protection' or some such. Quite where that leaves the hundreds who's lives were systematically ruined by CEOP's repeated witchunting over the years is anyone's guess, but I doubt they'll be applauding from the sidelines. The fact that Theresa May has not seen fit to reject his offer of resignation speaks volumes - I'll allow you to draw your own conclusions. When the only people arguing for his retention are those bottom feeders who - in these difficult financial times - happen to have a vested interest in his being at the head of CEOP, I think the picture's fairly clear for all.
His legacy, such as it is, makes for pretty grim reading. Possibly the most offensive of them (and there really are so very many of them) is his championing of the 'cartoon pr0n' laws which have now become statute in England & Wales. It was CEOP who crowded round the Parliamentary consultation leading up to the law, urging Ministers to not only introduce this wretched law, but to attach fiercely punitive punishments to it - even going so far as to suggest (in all seriousness) that courts should treat 'cartoon pr0n' with the same level of severity as that of real, actual photographic CP. Just how delusional does one have to become to advocate such madness? The sky was the limit for Big Jim - who could stop him?
The Coalition, it seems. Bravo.