A friend recently sent me a link with the pithy note saying that he was surprised that I was such mates with Vladimir Putin and that he hoped I would use my best endeavours to get him to pull the tanks out of Ukraine. Of course, I’ll do all I can on that front but I was a little surprised to learn of my close relationship with Putin too until I saw that the link was to an article by tawdry mischief-makers from the grouse shooting industry – see here.
C4PMC are the people who brought you, among other things:
- a travesty of Stephen Moss’s views on birds of prey ‘I’m incensed that the shooting lobby have twisted my words‘ – click here.
- a strong promotion of the fake nest that kept on giving – click here
- the news that I live in a swanky house – a view that my friends still chuckle over
- the shocking story of a fox predating a Hen Harrier nest on the flagship RSPB reserve in the Forest of Bowland (when the RSPB has no reserve in Bowland, flagship or otherwise) – click here
- and launched vicious attacks on a range of conservationists as a run-up to Christmas 2019 which were so nasty that even they pulled the idea in the end
They are so nasty, and so inaccurate, that I never look at their stuff but I had to find out about me, and the rest of Wild Justice, and Putin. Ruth Tingay is pretty secretive about her whereabouts – maybe she’s been meeting Russian oligarchs to talk about Greater Spotted Eagle persecution? Or has Chris been sending out coded signals on troop movements via Winterwatch programmes – wouldn’t surprise me, I don’t know what he’s on about sometimes? You never know do you? Except I think you do with this lot – it’ll be nonsense.
Their latest is to try to link me, and Wild Justice, to Putin via a legal firm that isn’t a legal firm and a barrister that I have never met – do read this – click here – and see for yourself how tenuous the supposed link is. Let’s clear one thing up, Matrix Law is not a legal firm it’s a set of barristers’ chambers. Barristers are essentially sole traders who get together in groups to share office costs, photocopiers, meeting rooms and telephone receptionists etc. see explanation here on a readily available website. I know some barristers at Matrix well, having worked with them, but they aren’t the only chambers that I and Wild Justice have used and none of us has ever worked with, spoken to, nor to the best of our knowledge ever seen Hugh Tomlinson QC.
Whatever Hugh Tomlinson QC has or hasn’t done, no glow of righteousness, nor shadow of guilt, can fall on any of us by association, since we are not associated.
It is worth reading what Isle of Wight MP Bob Seely did say in the House of Commons – click here. He sounds like a man on a mission and he named several legal firms (none of which Wild Justice has worked with). Mr Seely names Hugh Tomlinson at column 974 thus:
When it comes to solicitors, certainly in the Belton case, there is John Kelly at Harbottle and Lewis; Geraldine Proudler at CMS; Nigel Tait at Carter-Ruck—how often should that company have been mispronounced—which represents the interests of Rosneft; and Hugh Tomlinson QC, who represented all of them.
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2022-03-01/debates/6EF274E3-57A6-46ED-BFE2-348AEB926501/details
…and that’s it. I doubt that Mr Seely knows much about Wild Justice and certainly didn’t name them, and someone in C4PMC must have done a small amount of research to link Mr Tomlinson to Matrix to Wild Justice in this incredibly misleading and tenuous way. This is barrel scraping at its greatest depths.
But while we are at it, I was once in the same country as Donald Trump so I must share in his deeds even though I never talked to him, and I was once in the same room as Tony Blair so I share in his misdeeds (although it was a large room with hundreds of people in it) and I once sat next to Theresa May at a breakfast meeting about a decade before she became Prime Minister. The weight of all these relationships is hard to bear, but I’ll manage, and they were all as close and meaningful as my relationship with Putin.
While you are here – please consider donating to the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal for Ukraine:
Ah C4MPC, far more likely to have friends in high places in the Kremlin or indeed amongst Russian Oligarchs here. A thoroughly unpleasant, scurrilous organisation that peddles lies and innuendo as the truth in its “defence of DGS” because otherwise there is no reasonable defence. That some otherwise reasonable folk in shooting peddle and promulgate this organisations crap suggests they too are not really reasonable at all.
It is such a ludicrous and outlandish attempt to smear WJ that one’s first reaction is simply to laugh at it. How can anyone take such balderdash seriously? The problem is that if you fling enough shit some of it sticks, however unfairly. Some people are stupid enough and or ideologically blinded enough to believe this tripe even if any reasonable, rational person would dismiss it. If the major shooting organisations have a shred of decency I would expect them to dissociate themselves from this slur promptly and publicly. I await with bated breath.