Who gets out - and who comes in

 I doubt the liberal congoscenti will begin to comprehend the spittle flecked fury raging across the country about the erroneous release of Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, the Ethiopian migrant who arrived on a small boat and was convicted of sex offences on a 12 year old girl and a woman. When we heard this was the very dude whose original arrest was the trigger for the protests and disturbances at the Bell hotel, Epping it was a "you could not make that up" moment.

To my surprise the story wasn't even on the front page of most of the newspapers the next day which I found bizarre.

He's now been nabbed but the story epitomises the general air of incompetence around anything to do with the British government and the functions and services under its control. Many in authority will just sigh that this sort of thing is inevitable. I don't for a moment believe it is.

On the latest figures over 260 prisoners were incorrectly released in the 12 months to March 2025, a 128% increase on the previous year. So the number more than doubled. David 'Mastermind' Lammy said the government had "inherited a system that was collapsing" but he and Shabana Mahmood have overseen it getting much worse.  Something is clearly wrong in the system and I agree with the commentator who said this isn't really about an error by one person. If one officer did make an error I'm left wondering how the relevant process doesn't build in adequate checks.

Apparently the paperwork is awfully complicated. That sounds a very lame excuse. There will, I accept, be resource limitations and there is currently huge pressure on prison officers in our inadequate and overcrowded prison estate (another Tory failure, I must say. One would have thought building more prisons would have played well with their base).

But still none of that is an excuse. I don't know whether it is, but I would expect all paperwork on dangerous prisoners to be clearly marked. But I would also have expected that high political risk prisoners, like Kebatu, would be identified. There can't have been many higher political risk prisoners in the jail categories lower than A, the highest security. One can only assume they are not, which I find incredible.

Stats on the gov.uk website suggest that something like 90,000 prisoners a year are released, mainly on licence, and claims a "success rate" of 99.5%. I think that's a pretty abysmal performance for this particular activity. 1 in 200 is a fairly typical of a human error rate in a system without proper checking. A system that should be aspiring to very high reliability should be able to easily get to 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 10,000 and a high integrity system would expect to do much better than that. The government doesn't need to hold an expensive and time consuming public inquiry. It needs to marshall some of the expertise readily available to it and get a team of independent people with experience in prisons and in sectors like aviation, rail and nuclear and sort out a process that works. Releasing the wrong person shouldn't really happen more than a handful of times a year at the most, if ever.

Meanwhile the long run up to Rachel Reeves's budget continues and speculation grows. Why did she push the budget back to the latest possible date? The reason, as any accountant will tell you, is that bad numbers take much longer to add up.

I may return to what Reeves should do in her second budget but for now one can't help reflect that she didn't make particularly sound and robust decisions in her first, which was meant to be a "sort things out, once-off this parliament" budget. The general air of doom and despondency Reeves allowed to take hold in the run up to her last budget is being repeated. Talking down the economy and hiking taxes, with the ill judged NI increase made inevitable by Labour's rash manifesto promises, all pushed in the opposite direction to Labour's aspiration for growth. As Charles Colville pointed out in the Sunday Times if you talk down the economy and increase taxes on businesses then those businesses don't invest. Who knew? Well everyone, pretty much.

One straw in the wind I saw was an analysis by Chris Walker, of the independent economics consultancy Chamberlain Walker, which suggests that 1,800 former non-doms have left the country since April, twice the number expected, after Reeves abolished non-dom status which allowed people whose permanent homes are abroad to escape tax on their overseas income and wealth (note not their UK income). Most people would shrug their shoulders about that but it probably means that Reeves won't anything like get the extra £34 billion she predicted. Indeed I would expect the tax take to go down from the abolition of non-dom status. Which is why so many chancellors had left an arrangement that dated back over 200 years in place. Rachel clearly thought she knew better than two centuries of her predecessors.

The Treasury responded that the 1,800 estimate was based on "anecdotal evidence that we don't recognise". That is because the Treasury rely on data from HMRC, which collects information from people in employment. The wealthiest non-doms would be investors in and owners of businesses, not employees. Chris Walker concluded that the Treasury was "effectively flying blind" about the the behaviour of the most responsive group of non-doms, with no real idea of how many have decided to decamp to places like Dubai.

There is a less anecdotal piece of evidence which the Treasury didn't comment on. Ferrari limited its supplies of cars to Britain six months ago amid concerns that some people are getting out of the UK for tax reasons, as it's Chief Executive told the FT. OK, so we know who to believe then.

Reeves countered concerns that non-doms were leaving in an interview with the Guardian last week, in which she said "this is a brilliant country and people want to live here".

Sure Rachel, a lot of them do. The keenest seem to be folk like the guy who was removed under the one in one out deal with France and was back on a small boat within a month, d'oh...

I suppose that did show that we have some processes that work as at least that dude was immediately identified. Still, it's shame we can't swap out these two

Bonnie Blue and the swords of a thousand men

A couple of months ago there was a media tizzy over the Channel 4 "documentary" 1000 Men and Me: the Bonnie Blue story. Rather to my surprise, Mrs H agreed we should watch this to make our own minds up about the, ahem, journalistic merit of the story.

Bonnie Blue is the alter ego of Tia Billinger from Nottinghamshire, a girl with a middle class upbringing and a fascination with reality tv who turned a side hustle into a lucrative business based around exploiting her body utilising the OnlyFans "platform for creators".  Having become a "webcam model" and finding she could earn $5,000 a week she launched her OnlyFans page and established her USP in the porn market: having free sex with members of the public provided they consented to it being filmed and posted on line. The Sun showed her holding a poster saying "bonk me for free, let me film it".

The documentary charted her progress as she increased her monthly earnings into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, hiring a support team to help produce the videos and deal with all the paperwork. In order to grow her number of regular followers she decided she didn't just need to create content but to plan ever more eye popping stunts. She'd already run a series of videos about having sex with "barely legals" (which she noted wasn't her phrase) which put a whole new angle on university freshers' weeks. Her big wheeze was to set a world record by having sex with over 1,000 men in a day.

The documentary showed her planning and then posting the invitation, telling punters where they could report to take part while wondering aloud to the camera whether anyone would actually turn up. The film showed lines of men (waist down) queueing to take their turn. Bonnie had already told us they would get 40 seconds each to "do what they wanted", penetration counting as "having sex". This was some production line.

The stunt achieved its publicity objectives and her income soared to $500,000 dollars a month (some sources say over $2m a month). Where's there's muck, there's brass as they say.

However when she planned her next big stunt - being tied up naked in a glass box while members of the public did what they wanted to her - OnlyFans tired of her attention grabbing antics, or rather the credit card business that collects the cash from her punters decided it was harming their image and pressured OnlyFans to ditch her. The documentary showed a crisis meeting with her team as Bonnie realised her income had gone down from megabucks to zero in an instant.

She was more than put out - she had run every idea past the OnlyFans people before publishing her videos and got their ok. And, as she pointed out, while it might be a "platform for creators" the overwhelmimg majority of content posted is porn. She was more than miffed by the double standards.

She was only allowed to continue posting material if it used actors. So she returned to more conventional porn for a while but the need to maintain interest amongst her followers meant multiple men. Which she noted was exhausting because they were much fitter and stronger than members of the public.

Salvation was at hand in the form of another, less well known, site called Fansly. Bonnie fretted about how much the change would hit her income. Reports don't confirm her income on the new platform but it would be no sweat for her fans to migrate to Fansly so my guess is she's still putting it out there and coining it.

What did we think of the Channel 4 "documentary"? The content was tawdry, vulgar and undignified but the way it was portrayed, with some pixellation of Bonnie's anatomy and her punters only ever shown from the waist down and never actually doing anything could not be called obscene. 

Perhaps the grossest moment in the film was when Bonnie, having completed her epic feat of endurance cast her eyes over the floor of her ad hoc studio which was littered with discarded condoms and the odd bit of mislaid clothing (some of her punters must have arrived home with the odd sock missing). With a mischievous glint in her eye as an idea formed she lay down on the floor and did that snow angel thing with her arms an legs that people do in the snow, brushing the detritus aside. Yuck!

Surprisingly we warmed to some aspects of her personality. She seems close to her family and looks after them. While her parents had been shocked at their daughter's choice of "career" they are supportive, but then they've had their mortgage paid off. Her mum acts as Bonnie's PA and several of the family are Bonnie's payroll.

Her school mates have said they were shocked and surprised at how their friend's life has evolved. Tia married her privately educated boyfriend Olli, who had encouraged her when she had doubts about her webcam career, thinking she wasn't pretty enough and people wouldn't want to watch her. "No, you're beautiful, do it" the Sun reported. Olli's parents had subsidised the couple in the early days before her revenue earning took off and, at the start of the period covered by the documentary, they were still married. But by the end the weren't together.

There were a couple of take away messages from the Bonnie Blue documentary besides the obvious titillation. 

Firstly, Bonnie said she found what she did "empowering". I get that - it's certainly empowered her to accumulate a lot of money very quickly. It's her choice what she does with her body. But the obvious point to make is that what empowers her helps to disempower, intimidate and hurt large numbers of other women who aren't so assertive. The documentary didn't probe that issue, which left one feeling it was really just - er - light entertainment.

Secondly, there was some furore in the media over the ease with which young people could avoid age restrictions and view the documentary on Channel 4's streaming service. While it was tawdry it didn't show anything the majority of even "just teens" wouldn't already have been exposed to. Not that that's a good thing but that pass was sold a long time ago, unfortunately. But I wouldn't have wanted younger children to see it, with Bonnie (clothed) discussing with her producer whether the various bits of furniture were at a comfortable height for her purposes and trying out (on her own) some different positions. I'm very critical of the social media companies for not doing enough on age verification. But when the government can't seem to make sure that only people of an appropriate age watch services like Channel 4 catch up or BBC's iPlayer, how do they expect facebook, youtube and OnlyFans to do what they aren't doing with organisations under their control? For me that was perhaps as significant a point as any.

On a rather different note, after watching the programme I found myself humming a song from the early 80s I don't think I've heard in 40 years. After a while I identified it as punk influenced Tenpole Tudor's song "Swords of a Thousand Men". Ha, that's why I was humming it!

More on Tenpole Tudor below. And here is Bonnie Blue in a slightly more demure pose than some of them in the documentary:

1000 men and me: the Bonnie Blue story "documentary" is available on Channel 4's catch up service.

1000 Men and Me: the Bonnie Blue Story review - the troubling tale sex with 1,057 men in 12 hours. The Guardian, 29 July 2025

Bonnie Blue bedded hundreds of teens. But she also had a private school rugby husband and a VERY middle class upbringing. The Sun 11 November 2024 https://www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/31632237/bonnie-blue-middle-class-upbringing-husband/

I remembered punk recording artist Tenpole Tudor from his role in Julian Temple's 1981 film The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle in which he played himself, being called "Tadpole" throughout by Irene Handl's character. Swords of a Thousand Men was his most successful recording, reaching number 6 in the UK singles chart in the same year with its singalong chorus of "Hoorah, hoorah, hoorah, yeah - over the hill with the swords of a thousand men" over a simple but catchy guitar riff. Tenpole performed under the name of Edward Tenpole, though his real name is Edward Felix Tudor-Pole. Yes, he's an actual aristocrat, a descendent of Owen Tudor, grandfather of King Henry VII, founder of the Tudor dynasty. Punk rockers, eh?

China Syndrome

I'm puzzled by the collapse of the case against House of Commons researcher Christopher Cash and his buddy Christopher Berry. Most of the media scrum concerns whether the government gave in to bullying from China. While that would be a big story my concern is rather different. The case collapsed because China was not officially categorsed as an enemy. But why does a country have to be classified as an "enemy" for unauthorised passing of information to be a criminal offence? 

It also made me wonder how many countries are classified as enemies of the UK and which ones are they?

Having signed the Official Secrets Act myself many years ago I was under the impression that passing official secrets to anyone unauthorised would be in breach of the Act. On the occasions when I was in possession of classified documents it wouldn't have seemed to me to be a defence to say the recipient didn't belong to an enemy country. After all the recipient might pass it on.

The Commons Defence Select Commitee seemed to struggle with this when considering the Integrated Review of Security and Defence, which was carried out in 2021 and updated in 2023. The current government would therefore say it's not their work and out of date, but as they haven't updated it, it is theirs.That report concentrated on Russia and China, noting that that the Integrated Review only categorises Russia as an enemy (or at least "the most acute direct threat"). This left me wondering about Iran and North Korea for starters. But surely it wouldn't be a good idea to pass nuclear secrets to, say, Pakistan? Is that country an enemy?

It seems far too simplistic to categorise countries as enemies or allies. I'm sure there are many countries who are both friendly and antagonistic, depending on the issue. But even without those shades of grey, there's a lot of information we wouldn't want allies to see, especially at particular points in time e.g. in the run up to a trade negotiation. And there could be plenty of embarrassment if frank assessments of our allies and their leaders were leaked, as happened with comments about Trump. Are these sort of documents official secrets? Having worked in the nuclear industry not the Foreign Office, I've no idea but I doubt it.

Did the information Cash and Berry passed to the Chinese contain official secrets? We don't know. One of them was detained at Heathrow returning from China and found to have £4,000 in cash in his briefcase. Suspicious sure, but it can't have been especially valuable information, unless that was a down payment. I could easily imagine that the two prunes had a little side hussle going passing reports of tittle tattle (what's on the menu in the House of Commons tea room maybe, alongside some snippets of overheard gossip perhaps) to what they saw as gullible Chinese contacts. 

If they were passing stuff which did not contain material marked as officially secret that doesn't mean it was harmless. If the law doesn't prohibit passing of harmful info even to supposedly friendly countries it should. But a prosecution under the Official Secrets Act might not have been appropriate or the best way to proceed. In the case of the Commons researcher an employment sanction could have been considered though there would be the risk, had he been sacked without prosecution, that would have seemed weak, so politically risky. And it's not clear that avenue was open for the teacher. 

The collapsed case has also led to some angst about how to manage our relationship with China. It was remarkable with hindsight that we got into a position where a Chinese company, Huawei, would have been at the heart of our 5G network, all because BT had made major commercial deals with that company in 2005. At the time there seemed no great security concern: going back to before 2012 it seemed commerce and trade were the main aims of China but no-one appeared to ask any "what if?" questions. The "what if" came to pass when Xi Jinping became secretary, chairman and president of everything in China between 2012 and 2013. China's clampdown on Hong Kong and the Uigurs and it's more aggressive military stance in the Pacific followed. Meanwhile the UK seemed on autopilot, with David Cameron quaffing pints with Xi in the Cotswolds and the USA (Trump in particular) having to pressure Boris Johnson about Hauwei, who we seemed to want to stick with purely because of the extra cost and timescale of ditching them. It seems to have taken us a decade to get our mind round the simple fact that China wants to trade but also wants to spy on us.

Josh Glancy argued in the Sunday Times that we should choose how to deal with China pragmatically on the specifics of each issue: buy chairs from Beijing but not your wifi he said. That sounds simple but there are still many awkward areas. For example, clothes ok but what about electric cars? The Chinese company BYD is rapidly expanding its market share in the UK. Many experts think it's a very bad idea to have lots of high tech electric Chinese vehicles on UK roads. I tend to agree. But they're very much cheaper. This is not the only specific area where security and net zero would appear to be in conflict.

However we try to manage our relations with China it seems to me that we've been carelessly slow in trying to develop appropriate policies.

Together with the mess over defining and protecting our "secrets" from states that might not be enemies but might not always have our interests at heart (i.e. every other country) it's all quite a Laurel and Hardy situation really.

Post publication note: while I've concentrated here on the oddity that the recipient of leaked information appears to have to come from an enemy state for a succssful prosecution - which I'm still not sure I believe - there is one "smoking gun" in the government's position that it did not collapse the case. Starmer's National Security Adviser, the slippery Jonathan Powell, belongs to the 48 Group Club, a UK based organisation with deep ties to China's ruling communist party that aims to foster UK-China business and political relationships. That would seem to be a clear conflict of interest and completely inappropriate for his role. I find it bizarre that he didn't leave that group on his appointment as NSA. There is also the point that his deputy, Matthew Collins, included in his witness statement passages lifted from the Labour party manifesto. Sources say he wouldn't have done that without ministerial direction and that he has admitted privately that the decision not to provide the evidence requested by the CPS had been "political", contradicting claims made by Starmer and his ministers in the Commons. I note that Boris Johnson's defenestration was partly because of "misleading" parliament. Hmmm.

 P.S. Talking of employment sanctions I once terminated the contract of a project manager who had been passing commercial information to a competitor. We had evidence in the form of emails but the individual went for the modern day playbook, accused his boss (a very careful and measured chap) of bullying and took us to an industrial tribunal. There was some satisfaction when the chair of the tribunal, seeing straight through all of the nonsense, declared there was only one bully in the case and it was the claimant. I still remember the buzz that went around the open plan building after a resource manager and member of the HR team escorted this chap out of the building having arrived at his desk and requested his pass and keys. We could have been more discreet and invited him to a meeting but we wanted to make a visible example. Was that bullying? I don't think so, but it didn't backfire on us. I wonder if someone decided to make an example of Berry and Cash - and found it did backfire?

P.P.S. The China Syndrome was a 1979 film thriller starring Jane Fonda with a storyline about reporters discovering safety cover ups at a nuclear power plant. Just twelve days after the film was released the partial meltdown of a reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania made it seem prescient. The title is based on the figure of speech term for a nuclear reactor core melting down through the various containment structures and underlying earth all the way to China. While the story was fanciful I recall a key part of the plotline was the discovery of major corner cutting: all of the radiographs supposedly veryifying the different welds on a leaking component were identical. The organisation I worked for through the 1980s and 1990s pioneered the development of some non destructive testing techniques for nuclear components and was responsible for qualifying the inspectors of the Sizewell B reactor pressure vessel, basically exam testing the testers. I can't speak for the systems in place in the United States in the 1970s but reassuringly there were too many layers of verification for that particular ruse to have worked on Sizewell B, commissioned in 1995.  At Three Mile Island extensive monitoring of 30,000 people for 20 years showed no adverse health effects. I think I recall that, despite an awful lot going wrong leading to a fairly significant release of radioactivity, no member of the public received a radiation dose larger than a dental x ray.

* House of Commons publication Chapter 3: The UK in the world: allies and adversaries https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld5803/ldselect/ldintrel/124/12406.htm