Nadine Dorries MP Reported Disabled Twitter Critic to Police for Harassment

(Updated)

Mrs Humphrey Cushion writes on Tim Ireland’s blog:

On the night I finally had my foot operation (and was in tremendous pain & bed ridden for 3 days), 2 policemen burst into my bedroom (having scared my children into letting them in) and proceeded to attempt to bully me into accompanying them to the police station for an interview regarding Dorries’ stalking allegations. I refused, had fantastic advice from my great friend @Gaijinsan21 & no further action was taken. It was immediately obvious to the police that it was Nadine who was the liar of the piece. 

Mrs Cushion’s account comes following Tim Ireland’s publication of a second chunk of a letter which Nadine Dorries sent to the the Chief Constable of Bedfordshire Police on 10 July 2010, in which she complained about several persons who were inconveniencing her by subjecting her performance as an MP to critical scrutiny.

Yesterday’s chunk of the letter dealt with her general complaints against Tim and his blog – today deals with his presence at a hustings event in the village of Flitwick (pronounced “Flit-ick”), and with her accusation against Mrs Cushion.

Tim provides some background:

…Dorries had been seeking to shape hustings events to her advantage well before the Flitwick hustings event in May 2010. It was reported to me that she had denounced supporters of her opponents and other critics as ‘plants’ and ‘spies’ and even had alleged/imagined enemies forcibly ejected from her own private meetings.

…Concerned constituents wanted this final hustings event on record and made available to a wider audience, which is why they invited me to record and broadcast it.

Now, I do not deny that Dorries was properly frightened when she found out I was recording the meeting, but it had nothing to do with concerns about personal safety; Dorries was watching her political career flash before her eyes and would not be a politician if she did not immediately recognise the potential cost of my recording her response to any question(s) about her expenses two days before an election at a time when many suspected – and she knew – that she was under investigation for expenses fraud.

Dorries’ complaint about Tim’s presence at Flitwick led to a voluntary police interview in which it was determined that he had done nothing wrong; however, because of Dorries’ reaction he was warned that any further appearances might lead to some difficulties under laws covering harassment. Dorries and her allies deliberately misrepresented this as Tim having been warned about criminal conduct (all is explained here).

Dorries’ letter to the police links the Flitwick incident to Mrs Cushion:

He was informed of the meeting taking place by a woman known as [REDACTED BY POLICE] from [REDACTED]. [REDACTED – read “She”] also has a Twitter account in the name of [REDACTED, read @humphreycushion].

[REDACTED – read “She] also comments constantly on this site in a manner I can only describe as aggressive and written harassment.

Dorries gives no example of the “aggressive and written harassment” because – once again – she’s lying.

At this time, Mrs Cushion was indeed posting a large number of Tweets critical of Dorries (she is a activist for Labour, I believe as a result of Dorries’ antics), and Dorries was desperate to silence her: three months after writing this letter, Dorries went on to make a thoroughly malicious accusation of benefit fraud against her.

Mrs Cushion is a care-worker, but at the time of Dorries’ attack she was effectively disabled due to arthritis and she was waiting for an operation. Dorries insisted that if Mrs Cushion was well enough to be using Twitter to criticise her she couldn’t really be ill – and that her claim to be needing an operation was a lie:

Really? An operation on both feet for arthritis? Let’s put aside that surgeons never operate on both feet at the same time. This is a medical breakthrough. Hips and knees, yes, now feet! Amazing.  Twitter followers conned again.

In fact, Mrs Cushion indeed endured two painful procedures to her feet in order to get back to work, as I blogged here.

Dorries attempted to create a bit of distance from her smear against Mrs Cushion by leaking details to the pseudo-libertarian blogger Paul Staines (probably via Harry Cole, who knows Dorries and writes for Staines): a post attacking Mrs Cushion appeared on Staines’ website, and Dorries pretended that her own post on the subject was merely following his. Dorries was not only seeking to deceive readers of her blog – she was also insulting their intelligence.

It should be emphasised that Dorries’ reference to Mrs Cushion in her letter to police is not just an incidental detail in her case against Tim – in a statement to a news programme in October 2010 she made it very clear that she had reported “four stalkers” to the police. This fits with four persons who are named in the letter: Tim will be discussing her other two targets tomorrow.