Talk:Richard Scott

Sensitivity

The Arms-to-Iraq affair and Scott's report on it remain an ultra-sensitive issue to the British Deep state. This and related pages have seen a surge of traffic over the past few days, indicating likely monitoring by powerful interests. Please make sure that any accusations against living, named people and others who held positions of authority during the Thatcher years, can be substantiated from publicly available sources. Some speculative deduction from such evidence is also OK so long as it is reasonable and clearly reads as such. --Peter P (talk) 08:03, 5 March 2016 (GMT)

That surge of traffic Peter P was the result of my dozen or so Facebook postings of "Maggie's guilty secret" including three on different Jeremy Corbyn pages which were shared a phenomenal 76 times, shared 63 times and shared 59 times. The publicly available source substantiating the accusations is the Lobster magazine article (http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/lobster66/lob66-maggies-secret.pdf "Maggie’s guilty secret") by John Hughes-Wilson. This WS link to the Facebook postings no longer works, however.--Patrick Haseldine (talk) 16:34, 7 March 2016 (GMT)

Yes I figured it was Facebook referals from the Piwik stats. I keep my FB account permanently deactivated and only reactivate on odd occasions when I need to see something available nowhere else. I hate the damn system with a vengeance. No problem with using anything in Lobster as a reference either. It was just a general caution because, as we both know, this whole area of 'Maggie's guilty secrets' does remains ultra-sensitive to your former colleagues and those who pull their strings. That makes me ultra-sensitive too. --Peter P (talk) 17:35, 7 March 2016 (GMT)

In which case, can't we simply reinstate the removed section so that all the hundreds of punters who bothered to like and share the postings are not cheated when they make the effort to click on the WS link https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Richard_Scott#Maggie.27s_guilty_secret? Here's the cut and paste:--Patrick Haseldine (talk) 10:11, 8 March 2016 (GMT)

People who are genuinely interested will click a link or two. The plain fact is the the Richard Scott page should be about the man and his life/career of which chairing the Scott Inquiry is admittedly a significant part but only a part. That said, the meat of 'Maggies Guilty Secret' undoubtedly belongs in the Arms-to-Iraq page which is crying out for expansion based on the copious info already in various other related pages. Also links and perhaps a brief summary - even a sub-page?? from the Margaret Thatcher page. --Peter P (talk) 12:41, 8 March 2016 (GMT)

Maggie's guilty secret

Maggie's guilty secret

One of the biggest secrets of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership was that during the 1980s she and her Cabinet authorised a long running and totally illegal operation to supply arms secretly to both Iraq and Iran, in contravention of UN resolutions and British law. Billions of pounds worth of arms were exported illegally. Parliament was lied to and British ministers, officials and businessmen made fortunes from the illicit trade before it was discovered and swiftly closed down.

The British cabinet set up a secret sub-committee to oversee the operation, with both the Home Office (MI5) and the FCO (MI6) ordered to support the illegal exports. Michael Heseltine, Geoffrey Howe, Willie Whitelaw, Francis Pym and PM Thatcher all gave the secret project government blessing. During the 1992 Matrix Churchill trial ex-Minister Alan Clark let the cat out of the bag revealing that ‘the interests of the West were best served by Iran and Iraq fighting each other, and the longer the better.’

The whole sordid issue was hushed up by the Scott Inquiry; but to this day the full story of Maggie’s guilty secret has never been told – and probably never will.(ref "Maggie’s guilty secret" by John Hughes-Wilson /ref)

I removed the material because (amongst other reasons) I didn't judge it to be relevant enough to the topic of Richard Scott. The allegations as I understand them concern Scott only through the Scott inquiry. As such, a mention on the Scott Report page would be more appropriate. That page is currently a stub, and has a lot of room for improvement. -- Robin (talk) 11:04, 8 March 2016 (GMT)

The BBC article "1996: Arms-to-Iraq report published" tells us all we need to know about the Scott Report. As the John Hughes-Wilson article "Maggie’s guilty secret" so cogently concluded: "The whole sordid issue was hushed up by the Scott Inquiry; but to this day the full story of Maggie’s guilty secret has never been told – and probably never will."

So, to repeat, why can't we simply reinstate the removed section on the Richard Scott page?--Patrick Haseldine (talk) 11:40, 8 March 2016 (GMT)

I removed the material because (amongst other reasons) I didn't judge it to be relevant enough to the topic of Richard Scott. The allegations as I understand them concern Scott only through the Scott inquiry. As such, a mention on the Scott Report page would be more appropriate. That page is currently a stub, and has a lot of room for improvement. -- Robin (talk) 11:04, 8 March 2016 (GMT)