Amy Winehouse arriveed at Westminster Magistrates Court in Central London on Thursday to face a charge of assaulting a woman after a charity ball last year.
Reuters
Prosecutor Lyall Thompson said the award-winning Back to Black singer seemed to be under the influence of alcohol or “some other substance” when she struck Sherene Flash in a dressing [...]
Singer alleged to have punched dancer after performance at charity ball
Singer Amy Winehouse reacted with “deliberate and unjustifiable violence” when a dancer politely asked her for a photograph at a charity ball, a court heard today.
Prosecutor Lyall Thompson said the 25-year-old singer appeared to be under the influence of alcohol or “some other substance” when she struck dancer Sherene Flash at the summer ball in Berkeley Square, central London, last September.
Winehouse, who performed at the ball before she is alleged to have assaulted Flash, gave her name as Amy Jade Civil at the start of her trial at the City of Westminster magistrates court. Thompson said all the witnesses in the case knew her better as Amy Winehouse.
Winehouse, wearing a grey pinstripe skirt suit, sat quietly in the dock with her head bowed as the prosecution opened the case.
The court heard the incident happened in a dressing room soon after midnight on September 26. Thompson said Flash asked “politely” for a photograph of Winehouse.
The court heard the star appeared reluctant at first, but then agreed.
Flash was with a drunk friend called Kieran Connelly and as he tried to get into the photo Flash was taking, Winehouse punched Flash to her right eye, the court heard.
“It may be that it was that that annoyed Miss Winehouse,” Thompson said.
“Miss Winehouse may have felt she had generously agreed to be photographed on her own and not with a drunken stranger.”
But he said: “This was a deliberate assault by Miss Winehouse. There was nothing accidental about Miss Winehouse’s actions. She reacted badly to a polite request.”
He told the court that while stars of Winehouse’s stature may find such requests “tiresome”, they “need to develop strategies to deal with unwanted attention”.
Thompson said that when Winehouse was arrested and questioned on March 5 she issued a prepared statement before answering “no comment” to questions.
The singer told police she had told Flash she wanted to say goodbye to someone else first, but Flash put her arm around her and told her the other person “could wait”.
Thompson said: “Miss Winehouse admitted she was offended and claimed to feel intimidated.”
But he said she told police her only physical reaction was to push Flash away with her forearm. Winehouse also told police that Flash put her arm around her.
Thompson said: “Far from having her arm around her, Miss Flash was not even standing next to Miss Winehouse.
“The movement of her arm was indicative of a direct blow.”
Patrick Gibbs, cross examining Flash, argued that Winehouse had agreed to be photographed but had asked the dancer to come back later .
Flash rejected this and insisted the singer had said nothing of the sort.
Gibbs continued: “What happened is this. You wanted to be in a photo with Miss Winehouse. When she said: ‘I am coming back in two minutes time,’ you weren’t prepared to wait.
“You put your arm around her and she pushed you away, and she must have caught you on the side of your eye.”
He asked if there was an unwritten rule about not requesting performers to pose for photos in the backstage area.
Flash replied: “No, you just know your place.”
Gibbs asked if the dancer may have misread the situation.
She answered: “Even if I did, it doesn’t give someone the right to punch someone in the face.”
The dancer acknowledged that she had drunk wine, champagne and sips of a cocktail during the evening but insisted that she had not been drunk.
She said: “In that environment I am at work, so I don’t drink too much.”
She said she had behaved politely during her conversation with Winehouse.
Tory candidate expected to win in poll triggered by resignation of MP caught up in expenses scandal
Gordon Brown is bracing himself for electoral defeat as polls opened today in the Norwich North byelection.
Labour has held the seat comfortably since 1997 but the party is expected to pay a heavy price for the MPs’ expenses controversy in the first Westminster byelection since the Commons was rocked by the scandal.
David Cameron is due to visit the constituency for the sixth time this morning, giving a final boost to a campaign seen by Conservative headquarters as an important test of the party’s ability to withstand a Labour attack based on a “Tory cuts” message.
Unusually, the votes will be counted tomorrow rather than at the close of the polls this evening, partly because staffing a daytime count is easier. This has not happened at a byelection in recent years.
The byelection was caused by the resignation of Ian Gibson, a leftwinger who quit parliament after Labour ruled that he would not be allowed to stand at the next election because he used parliamentary expenses to fund a flat which he subsequently sold at a discount to his daughter.
Gibson, who was popular in the constituency, had a majority of 5,459 in 2005, and Labour’s decision to ban him as a candidate appears to have backfired, with some voters telling the party that they will not vote for his replacement, 28-year-old Chris Ostrowski, because they think Gibson was treated unfairly.
The Conservatives seem confident of victory. But they are nervous of comparisons with the Crewe and Nantwich byelection last year, when the Tories overturned a Labour majority of more than 7,000, winning by 7,860 with a swing of 17.6%.
“Crewe and Nantwich took place against the backdrop of the abolition of the 10p rate of tax and voters were so angry that they came straight over to us. Norwich North is different because, as a result of expenses, the voters are angry with all parties,” said one senior Tory.
Chloe Smith, the 27-year-old Conservative candidate, has responded to the challenge of campaigning in a climate of scepticism about politicians by issuing her own “contract with the people of Norwich North” containing various promises on policy and expenses.
The Liberal Democrats, who were well behind the Tories in 2005, claimed yesterday that it was now a Tory-Lib Dem contest, and that Labour could come third behind their candidate, April Pond.
At the start of the byelection, Labour campaigned aggressively on the theme of “Tory cuts”, in what was seen as a dry run for the general election strategy being planned by Brown. But the Tories believe that this tactic has been unsuccessful in Norwich North because they are winning the argument on public spending nationally.
Labour’s campaign suffered a blow when Ostrowski was taken to hospital with swine flu yesterday. He was recuperating today, but cabinet ministers Andy Burnham and Alan Johnson were in Norwich North campaigning on his behalf.
“I am very confident that we can win this byelection,” said Burnham. Privately, Labour was trying to make life difficult for Cameron by suggesting that anything less than a 10,000 majority would be a disappointment for the Tory leader.
The other candidates are: Peter Baggs (Independent), Thomas Burridge (Libertarian party), Anne Fryatt (None of the Above party), Bill Holden (Independent), Laud Howling (The Official Monster Raving Loony party), Craig Murray (Put An Honest Man into Parliament), Rupert Read (Green), Glenn Tingle (UK Independence party) and Robert West (British National party).
Actor who plays Vincent Crabbe admits keeping plants in his mother’s home after being stopped with his friend
A Harry Potter actor was ordered to do unpaid community work today after admitting growing cannabis.
Jamie Waylett, 20, who plays Vincent Crabbe in the films, admitted growing 10 plants at his mother’s home.
District judge Timothy Workman said the cannabis cultivation was on a small, but sophisticated scale. He ordered Waylett to undertake 120 hours of community service during a hearing at City of Westminster magistrates court.
Waylett and his friend John Innis, 20, were stopped under the Terrorism Act in St John’s Wood, north-west London, after the actor took a photograph of a police patrol as they drove past. Innis’s black Audi was searched and police discovered a butterfly lock-knife under the driver’s seat and eight small bags of herbal cannabis.
When the officers examined the mobile phone on which the shots had been taken they found images of cannabis plants which Waylett admitted were his. They then visited his mother’s house in Kilburn, north west London, and found 10 cannabis plants growing in a tent in his bedroom.
They found a further three bags of cannabis at a search of Innis’s home in Barnet, north London.
Waylett, of Kilburn, admitted production of cannabis at a hearing last week. Innis admitted possession of a knife and having 11 bags of cannabis. The judge sentenced Innis to six weeks’ custody in a young offenders’ institution, and fined him £500. He also ordered that all of the drugs and cultivation equipment be destroyed.
Cheryl Rudden, defending both men, said they were “extremely sorry and remorseful”.
After the hearing Waylett said: “I extend my sincere apologies to the producers, cast and crew and all at Warners, and most especially to all Harry Potter fans.”
Statement shows which politicians, celebrities and journalists were entertained at the prime minister’s country residence
The entertainer Bruce Forsyth and the football commentator John Motson were among those who received official hospitality at Chequers over the last year, Gordon Brown revealed today.
Their names are included on a list of all those entertained at the prime minister’s country residence in 2008-2009, a ministerial statement showed.
The list – which includes a large number of politicians and journalists – always attracts considerable interest at Westminster, where it is seen as a guide to who belongs to the Brown social circle.
Embarrassingly for the prime minister, Sir Fred Goodwin, the bank boss blamed for the demise of RBS, was one of the City figures to enjoy the prime minister’s hospitality.
Downing Street did not say when guests were entertained at Downing Street, or whether they attended functions at Chequers, in Buckinghamshire, more than once.
Celebrities on the list include the showbiz stars Matt Lucas, David Walliams and Davina McCall, the author John O’Farrell, the singer Lesley Garrett, the actors Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson and Greg Wise and the runner Dame Kelly Holmes.
The former poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion and the former children’s laureate Michael Rosen were also guests.
Senior ministers invited to join Brown included Ed Balls and his wife, Yvette Cooper, Nick Brown, Liam Byrne, Alistair Darling, Lord Drayson, Harriet Harman, Tessa Jowell, Ed Miliband, Lord Myners, Lord West and Shaun Woodward
Sir Menzies Campbell, the former Liberal Democrat leader and a long-time friend of Brown from Scotland, was invited there, as was his wife, Lady Elspeth.
Journalists on the list include ITN’s Tom Bradby, Sky’s Kay Burley, GMTV’s Gloria de Piero, the Spectator’s Matthew d’Ancona, Will Lewis, Patrick Hennessy, Andrew Porter and Benedict Brogan, of Telegraph newspapers, Katharine Viner and Jonathan Freedland from the Guardian, Philip Webster from the Times, the Mirror’s Kevin Maguire, the Sun’s George Pascoe Watson and the Observer editor John Mulholland.
On the doorsteps of Norwich, voters are sick to death of government sleaze. So every prospective MP tiptoeing towards them, from the Conservatives to the Greens, claims to represent a clean break from corrupt Westminster.
But in the Norwich North byelection next week, the first test for nervous political parties after the expenses scandal, the only person who seems certain to win if they stood is their Labour MP, Ian Gibson, who resigned after his party deselected him over his expenses.
“Dr Ian Gibson was just about the best MP in the country,” said one voter. “He had time for everybody.”
“If Ian Gibson went independent, I’d vote for him,” said David Lewis. “The Labour party has dropped a big one here.” Peggy Lewis added: “It’s scandalous how he’s been treated.”
Gibson, a respected backbencher, was bitterly disappointed when Labour’s expenses disciplinary committee barred him from standing at the next election for selling the London flat he part-funded from his second home allowance to his daughter at below-market rates.
But Gibson will not stand as an independent against his party. Instead, the race for Norwich North is the clearest demonstration yet of a new era multi-party politics. The Conservatives are favourites to recapture a seat they lost in 1997 but the election is a four-way fight and could be a political watershed for the Green party, which has built up a uniquely strong base in Norwich.
The Greens have 13 city councillors and won seven Norwich seats – from Labour and the Liberal Democrats – in the June county council elections. They took a 25% share of the Norwich vote in the European election and, with so many parties standing, including the maverick Norfolk-born independent Craig Murray, 25% could be enough to win Norwich North.
“We’ve never had a strong local base or councillors when fighting a byelection before,” said the Green candidate, Rupert Read, a city councillor and philosophy lecturer. “Now the public and the media have got reasons to take us seriously, who knows what will happen?”
The Greens will not say they can win, and more than half of the electorate in Norwich North live in strongly Conservative suburbs beyond the city boundaries, but Caroline Lucas, the MEP and leader of the Greens, said: “There is a very strong sense of disillusionment with all of the three main parties and that is something that can play well for us. People want to vote for something that is more positive and progressive, a vote for the future rather than a vote for the grey parties of the past.”
In Norwich’s Victorian streets, most voters back the Greens – to their faces, anyway. “We’ve had enough of all the other ones so maybe we’ll give you a try,” Joanne Shrimpling told Read.
Martin Smith has voted Labour in the past and felt the party stuck “a few knives in the back” of Gibson. So he will vote Green this time. “It is important to have some pressure groups in Westminster,” he said.
Gibson refused to endorse the Greens but said: “I’m still a member of the Labour party but very uneasy about the way I’ve been treated. The Green party are developing, they know they’ve got a lot of support and the other parties better take notice because they work hard, they are young and they are keen. I’ve no doubt that Norwich could fall to them in the future.”
The Greens may be helped by the well-funded Ukip, who will take votes from the Tories and are already putting billboards up across the city promising a “clean start”. But the Greens may end up doing the Conservatives a bigger favour, according to Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat MP for North Norfolk. “The risk is that they let the Tories in by dividing non-Tory voters,” said Lamb. He argued that the Lib Dem candidate, April Pond, was a free-thinking politician in the mould of Gibson. “The fascinating thing is Labour have chosen a guy from London and the Conservatives have someone who is quite Westminster-centric and we’ve got a local businesswoman who is Norfolk to the core. Given the seat is used to an independent-minded MP, she is a natural successor to Ian.”
Labour hopes that by choosing Chris Ostrowski – a 28-year-old John Lewis employee with ties to Norwich from his university days – it can shrug off the controversy over the treatment of Gibson, who had a 5,459 majority, and hold the seat. Charles Clarke, the Labour MP for Norwich South, said: “There is anger at the way Ian Gibson has been treated by Labour but the party is very determined to do its very best to win the byelection and it has got a very strong candidate to do so.”
Three centre-left parties competing for votes and little enthusiasm for the BNP has left the Tory byelection frontrunner, Chloe Smith, 27, a Norfolk-born business consultant who has been campaigning in the constituency for 18 months, needing a 5.9% swing.
“I’ve been talking to as many residents as I can about what matters in Norwich,” she said. “We need a strong local MP who can be a champion for the things that are important for Norwich but it’s also an opportunity to send a message to Gordon Brown by voting Conservative and looking for a strong but fresh face to be their MP.”
She has benefited from two visits from David Cameron already, although the Tory leader blotted his copybook with his German accent during one trip.
Even Smith paid tribute to the “strength” of Gibson – disgraced in Labour’s eyes but currently the most popular man in Norwich.
MPs investigating allegations of widespread use of private investigators by the News of the World to hack into phones were handed documents today revealing that more journalists were involved in the practice than the paper’s owner, News International, has previously admitted.
During testimony to the Commons committee on culture, media and sport, the Guardian investigative reporter Nick Davies produced previously unseen records which showed that two senior figures on the paper as well as a junior reporter had a role in obtaining the contents of private voicemail messages through a private investigator.
News International has previously insisted that only one of its journalists, the royal editor, Clive Goodman, had used this illegal method. He was jailed for four months in January 2007, along with a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire.
Yesterday Davies handed over copies of an email from an unnamed junior News of the World reporter to Mulcaire that also referred to the paper’s chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck. In the email, the reporter says: “Hello, this is the transcript for Neville.” Davies told the committee that the email, dated 29 June 2005, contained “a typed-up transcript of 35 messages which Mulcaire had hacked from the telephones of Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association, and Jo Armstrong, a legal adviser at the PFA”.
The second document handed to MPs was a contract dated February 2005 between the News of the World assistant editor Greg Miskiw and Mulcaire – who was using an alias, Paul Williams. In the document, Miskiw promises Mulcaire a bonus of £7,000 if he delivers a specific story about Gordon Taylor.
The Guardian revealed last week that Taylor, Armstrong and a third person were paid a total of more than £1m in costs and damages by the News of the World’s parent company, News Group, to settle a lawsuit for breach of privacy and to keep it secret. Davies told the committee: “It is hard to resist the conclusion that [News International] have consistently admitted only what has been dragged into the public domain and is indisputable.”
The Guardian’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, who was also giving evidence to MPs, said the Taylor story was significant “because it undermines the assurances given both to you and the PCC [Press Complaints Commission] about the sole reporter and the sole detective – the so-called rotten apple defence”. He continued: “News International have known about the involvement of other journalists, including at senior level, for at least a year. It is believed the case [Gordon Taylor] was settled last September. So that begs the question: why they did not tell the PCC, the regulators, or this committee, of the new facts that have come to light.”
The Conservative party’s director of communications, Andy Coulson, who was editing the News of the World at the time of the Goodman case, resigned when Goodman was convicted.
Both documents produced by the Guardian today had been seized by police during the Goodman case.
Rusbridger said the Guardian story was not “a campaign to oust anybody”.
“It wasn’t a campaign to reopen the police inquiry, or to call for prosecutions or to force anybody to resign. We have not called for any of those.
“As a paper we do believe in effective self-regulation and we don’t want a privacy law. When it comes to effective self- regulation, it seems to me it can only work if newspaper groups are truthful and open with the regulators.”
He suggested to MPs that a possible way forward for newspaper editors would be to draw on a definition of the public interest proposed by the government’s former security co-ordinator Sir David Omand.
John Whittingdale, who chairs the culture committee, said the Guardian’s revelations “raised questions” about the extent of phone hacking at the tabloid. News of the World editor Colin Myler and Tom Crone, the paper’s in-house lawyer, will give evidence to the MPs next week.
It also emerged today that the Home Office questioned the decision by Scotland Yard’s assistant commissioner, John Yates, not to reopen the Met’s phone-tapping investigation.
An exchange of letters placed in the House of Commons library discloses that Stephen Rimmer, the Home Office’s director general of crime and policing, wrote to Yates last Friday asking what the Met was doing about the allegations about the involvement of 27 other journalists and whether the police would be informing all those allegedly targeted.
Yates’s reply, sent the same day, said that he had not conducted a review and said he had only been asked by the Met commissioner to establish the facts in the light of the Guardian’s articles in connection with the 2005 police investigation.
Yates’s confirmation that the original investigation did not cover any other journalists has fuelled demands at Westminster that Scotland Yard reopen its investigation. Its understood the Commons home affairs select committee is also likely to open its own investigation into the police failure to look into the wider allegations unless it receives a satisfactory explanation by the end of this week.
Informed initially by their own experiences, these Latinas galvanized efforts to effect societal change that produced results far beyond identity politics. Each could serve as a worthy role model for Latina and non-Latina professionals.
“Ooh, ooh, You might not ever get rich But let me tell ya, It’s better than diggin’ a ditch” This opening line from the title…
Broadcaster Vanessa Feltz reacts to news that her mobile phone messages were allegedly intercepted by private investigators working for the News of the World. We also hear from another victim; not a celebrity but painter and decorator Tony Harding.
Michael White assesses the mood in Westminster after the police announce there will be no new inquiry into the Guardian’s revelation that News Group Newspapers – the Rupert Murdoch company that owns the News of the World – paid £1m to keep details of its journalists’ methods secret.
Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association, was one of those whose phone was tapped. Among those contacting him were the football managers Sir Alex Ferguson and Alan Shearer. Media Talk presenter Matt Wells explains how widespread the practice of phone-tapping is in British journalism.
Steven Morris meets the relatives of British soldiers serving in Afghanistan, after a week of grim news.
And Maev Kennedy looks forward to a major exhibition of Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings and letters at London’s Royal Academy.
The Lib Dem power failure
The party controls swaths of urban Britain but lacks the leadership and vision our great cities require
With growing confidence, Nick Clegg is making his mark at Westminster. On Trident, on Afghanistan and, at yesterday’s prime minister’s questions, in condemning parliament’s inability to reform itself, the Liberal Democrat leader is asking the tough questions and hinting at a more radical and progressive political future.
But in power it’s a rather different story. For after last month’s victories in the local elections, Clegg’s party is now a major player in public life. In control of Bristol, Liverpool, Hull and Sheffield; part of a Tory coalition governing Birmingham and Leeds; and in charge of numerous London boroughs. The Lib Dems are dictating the shape of great swaths of urban Britain. And just then the confidence and bravery on show in SW1 appears to dissipate. All too often an insurgency party, built on grassroots campaigns about town hall excess and mending fences, lacks the political vision to govern our greatest cities.
All politics is local – an aphorism the Lib Dems have burned into their retina. When it comes to speed-bumps, cycle-paths, planning applications and all the miserable frustrations of suburban life, the party is there, making a difference. Organised, motivated, and effective, they pick up council seat after council seat where there is any whiff of one -party hubris.
But such a parochial focus inevitably causes political contradictions. As the London Green party leader Jenny Jones has deftly chronicled, Clegg’s troops are against roadbuilding – apart from the Newbury, Batheaston, and Lancaster bypasses. They are opposed to the expansion of Heathrow in south-west London, but in favour of the growth of Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool airports. And they are against incinerators – apart from when they are for them, in Exeter, Plymouth and Barnstaple.
One could see this as an admirable display of localism, with each regional party defining its policy agenda. Yet it might also hint at the woeful lack of a governing ideology, allowing the party to position itself as a perennial protest vote. Perhaps the Lib Dems are the party of liberty – but how does one explain their passion for CCTV cameras? Maybe it is the party of social justice, but not if it means free school meals in Hull or Islington.
In fact, amid all the campaigns and promises of action, the Lib Dem offer at local government usually boils down to the chance to throw the buggers out, maintain an inflation-linked council tax, and have the refuse collected regularly. Not one of those is an ignoble ambition for millions of residents. But when it comes to leading our cities, a grander civic sense is surely called for.
And here the Liberals have a proud history. It was Joseph Chamberlain‘s municipal socialism that transformed Birmingham in the 1870s, slicing Victoria Square and Corporation Street and Council House Square (later Victoria Square) through the fetid, medieval core of the city,by clearing 40 acres of slums and taking control of gas and water in the process. “Ward meetings assumed a new character,” recalled a contemporary. “They spoke of sweeping away streets in which it was not possible to live a healthy and decent life; of making the town cleaner, sweeter and brighter; of providing gardens and parks and music; of erecting baths and free libraries, an art gallery and a museum.” Chamberlain delivered these changes with the backing of a Liberal party unafraid to think big. Overriding local ward objections, Chamberlain “parked, paved, assized, marketed, Gas-and-Watered and improved Birmingham” – all within three years.
In the past decade, Britain’s cities have undergone similar urban renewal – in the sage words of Michael Heseltine, “the biggest investment and regeneration since the Victorian age”. Post-industrial conurbations have revitalised their city centres, begun to conserve their civic fabric, and attracted new residents and businesses (if not yet tackled the problems of schooling), all of which have necessitated taking risks with big capital projects such as trams and business parks, thinking strategically about the international brand of a city, and confronting vested interests.
Precisely such a policy has transformed Manchester under Sir Richard Leese’s leadership. Glasgow is heading in the same direction under Steven Purcell. Even Wandsworth council under Tory leader Edward Lister – philistine and reactionary as it is – has a sense of civic purpose. Yet you will look in vain for a similar spirit of urban ambition from many Lib Dem leaders, too often focused on the cracks in the pavement rather than the true measure of a metropolis. In Hull and Bristol it is too early to tell, but in Sheffield they are already undermining a global reputation for sporting excellence and, in Leeds, the council is putting that city’s creative regeneration at risk with cuts to the arts and voluntary sector.
Of course, there are many progressive Lib Dem councils: Richmond has pioneered a range of quality-of-life policies, while Liverpool has invested in a cultural strategy embracing the entire city. And, of course, the party plays an essential part in the ecology of democratic pluralism. But I know what a Tory council stands for, and I know what a Labour council does, but I have no idea what a Liberal town looks like – apart from boasting some well managed controlled parking zones.