- Secrets and lies part one - 27th January 2025
- Court in the act again part two - 24th January 2025
- Court in the act again part one… - 23rd January 2025
During 23 years with the BBC, and a 41 year journalistic career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, almost became used to bizarre defences for wrong-doing which were ‘economical with the truth’, and today this is highlighted by more evidence emerging about crucial cables linking NATO countries being broken by ‘accident’.
The things people say beggar belief…
A person we suspected of murder told me that HE was the real victim in what had happened!
A fraudster denied his identity to me on camera, even when I presented him with evidence.
So I can, perhaps, be allowed to take with a lorry-load of salt statements from Russia and China about why critical underwater cables were severed in the Baltic Sea.
Before Christmas, Sweden formally asked China to co-operate with an investigation into damage to two of these vital bits of infrastructure after a Chinese ship was linked to the incidents.
The cables – one between Sweden and Lithuania, with the other between Finland and Germany – were damaged in Swedish territorial waters in the Baltic Sea on November 17 and 18.
A Chinese ship, the Yi Peng Three, is believed to have been in the area at the time and was afterwards anchored in international waters off Denmark.
Yet, of course, Beijing denied ANY involvement, but, weirdly, in another statement said it was an ‘accident’.
Meanwhile the defence minister of Germany Boris Pistorius proclaimed that damage to the undersea cables in the Baltic Sea was an act of sabotage and a “hybrid action”.
The 1,170 kilometre (730-mile) telecommunications cable between Finland and Germany was severed late last year, while the other one between Lithuania and Sweden’s Gotland Island stopped working suddenly the day before.
The incidents came at a time of heightened tension between NATO countries and Russia (China’s ally with Xi Jinping saying their friendship “knows no limits”).
Mr Pistorius proclaimed: “Nobody believes that these cables were cut accidentally”.
There has been huge alarm, and the Swedish and Lithuanian defence ministers said they were “deeply concerned” by what had happened.
“Situations like these must be assessed with the growing threat posed by Russia in our neighbourhood as a backdrop”, ministers Pal Jonson and Laurynas Kasciunas said in a statement.
Amid all the obfuscation (which I would contend is DELIBERATE) there is also evidence of practices which are even more dubious.
The ships at the centre of it all were kitted out as “spy ships”, according to an investigation by Lloyd’s List Intelligence, a shipping information service.
They were crammed with high-tech intelligence-gathering equipment which it seems was being used to monitor NATO ships and aircraft.
So the next time you are told that suspicious events were an ‘accident’, or a fraudster denies who he is despite the evidence – reach for the salt!
The memories of Phil’s astonishing, decades long award-winning career in journalism (when he was often confronted with bare-faced lies) as he was gripped by the rare neurological disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A Good Story’. Order it now.
‘Secrets and lies part two’ is tomorrow, where he looks at how gay people in China must remain in the shadows, as the authorities continue their crackdown on LGBTQ culture with news that 10 people have been arrested for writing ‘gay erotica’.
