Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, is at the centre of a growing storm of allegations that he didn’t tell or show the whole truth, when he made the claim that he had received one of the much publicised ‘Punish a Muslim Day’ poison pen letters that have supposedly been doing the rounds. Mr Javid’s primary responsibilities are to look after issues pertaining to local government and other related matters, but he also has ultimate responsibility for grants handed out to various taxpayer funded groups that the DCLG supports. These groups include the often criticised ‘Islamophobia’ monitors Tell Mama for example, which received £1.9 Million in public money (See Lord Young of Cookham’s statement to the Upper House on this here). Tell Mama, it needs to be remembered at this point, have played a major part in publicising the story of the ‘Punish a Muslim Day’ letters and have been whining about them for nearly a month now.
The issue at hand is a claim made by Sajid Javid that he had received one of the letters and he posted what he said was an image of one of the letters that he personally had received. However, as Shazia writing over at Alt News Media has said, he was challenged on social media on the veracity of his claim that the picture he used was of the actual letter he received. When it was pointed out to him that this picture was the same as the image that being pimped round by Tell Mama (a recipient of taxpayer largesse via Sajid Javid’s department), Mr Javid backtracked and tried to claim that he used this image from Tell Mama to obscure his own contact details. Like Shazia I believe that this is a bit of a bullshit excuse. It’s dead easy to obscure relevant contact details on a letter, I’ve done it myself for contacts who have provided this blog with information about stories. In any event Mr Javid has access to numerous functionaries and flunkies who could easily do this redacting for him if he was too busy to do this himself.
Shazia at Alt News Media said:
On the 9th March TellMama blogged on their website and shared an image of the letter which was then used by Sajid Javid who claimed that he had also received the letter. The picture of the letter Javid allegedly received was nothing more than a cropped copy of the one TellMama released. He soon deleted the picture from his social media after many people called him out on the fact that he was sharing someone else’s letter and not an actual image of his own letter. The excuse he gave was that his letter contained personal information and he felt the need to crop it, which is total bullshit. If he had received a letter, he could very easily have blacked out the ‘personal’ content he didn’t want to share.
I cannot disagree with this comment from Shazia. What she said is correct. I have looked at the Sajid Javid picture that he claims is his letter and compared it with the Tell Mama letter and they are absolutely identical. If you look at the wood patterns on the desk in the image that Tell Mama have sent out then you will see that it is exactly the same as the image supplied by Sajid Javid, it is, as Shazia said, just a cropped down copy of what Tell Mama have sent out. I also agree with Shazia that the excuse that Mr Javid came out with is pretty lame and one that is very easily busted as both Shazia and I have shown.
At this point I need to say that there are a copious number of Tweets relating to this story including a Tweet where Sajid Javid is claiming that ‘this is the letter I received’. You can find some of the relevant Tweets and comments that I have seen and been forwarded, at the bottom of this article. It’s really worth reading them, looking at the images and listening to others opinions on this subject and drawing your own conclusions as to whether Sajid Javid is telling the truth or not.
Having seen the Tweets, the pictures and the comments around them and looked at the timeline that this issue relates to, I have to say that it’s difficult not to draw the conclusion that Mr Javid has been less than scrupulously honest about this incident and his excuses for not showing the original letter, are not exactly credible. The excuse is, as Shazia said ‘bullshit’.
It is extremely worrying that a Secretary of State such as Sajid Javid is being so patently dishonest, claiming that the press release image is of a letter that he or his staff received and making such a poor excuse once he was caught out. We should ask urgent questions about Mr Javid’s probity, as he should not have become involved in what has become a publicity campaign for Tell Mama, a group that his department funds. This is especially the case when there is no real proof at this stage of whether the letters are real, or put out by a Muslim group themselves to claim victimhood or a sick prank.
Now of course these letters, if real, are unpleasant and I agree with the likes of Sargon of Akkad that we should not act on them or take them seriously and definitely not become involved in violence against random Muslims. Nobody should have to live in fear of random violence aimed at them because of their race or religion and in addition to commit such acts of violence would be completely counterproductive in a number of ways. It would be especially counterproductive as violence would give the likes of Tell Mama a credibility that they do not deserve.
But the fact is these letters, whether real or fake, exist, and the existence of these letters raises so many questions that need answering, because there are many aspects of these letters that do not ring true to me or to many others. Sajid Javid would have been better off keeping out of this issue. His lack of honesty over the issue of the letters and the dubious excuse when caught out look bad. What also looks bad is his joining in with the handwringing orchestrated in large part by Tell Mama over these letters, a group that, despite its bad reputation for probity and truth-telling, is still being hosed down with large amounts of taxpayers’ money that could be much better spent elsewhere.
I’m afraid that this incident could cast a great shadow over Mr Javid’s career and it is most certainly going to taint his public image. There must be a lot of people who are looking at Mr Javid and the furore over the false claim about the image of the letter and wonder about Mr Javid’s character. They may wonder if Mr Javid is prepared to be less than 100% honest over the relatively minor issue of the dodgy picture of the ‘Punish a Muslim Day’ letter, then which other things, much more important things, is Mr Javid also being less than 100% honest about?
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I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those people, you know who you are, who have helped me with this piece by sending me links etc
Below you will find some of the Tweets that I could find relating to Sajid Javid’s claim that the picture was real and the commentary surrounding this claim.
Javid;’s claim that this is the letter that he received
Note identical letter identical background to both Javid’s claimed letter and the TM press release
