Guido Fawked – No Joy With Joyce

For someone with a less than exemplary past record for alcohol related mishaps, the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines has a strange fascination with other people’s excursions into the land of the overtired. This manifested itself earlier this month when news reached the rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog that Falkirk MP Eric Joyce had been arrested outside the Commons Sports and Social Club.

Joyce had been involved in a brawl just over a year previously in the Strangers’ Bar, which had resulted in his being given a 12 month community order and a three month pub ban, and The Great Guido lost no time in telling that Joyce “had already been involved in some argie-bargie in the Sports and Social earlier that night” before being arrested and taken away in a Police van.

There was also great fascination with the news that a young woman had been knocked over in an incident prior to Joyce’s arrest (though it was not his doing). Compare and contrast with Staines’ threats of legal action against those who mention the young woman who got knocked over as a result of his rabble barging into a Ken Livingstone photo-op at London Bridge Station last year.

Then, the other day, the Fawkes blog noted that an appeal for witnesses was still present on the door of the Sports and Social club bar. Those said to have had some kind of video recording of events were urged to get in touch with the Commons authorities. But those who had been keeping tabs on this event already knew that the The Great Guido’s account was in trouble.

The clue to this came from Joyce himself, who had noted “The reason for the original arrest at the Sports and Social Bar was dropped within hours when it became clear I was uninvolved in an incident the police had assumed I had been involved in”. So the rozzers had assumed Joyce to have been involved in that ‘argie-bargie’ when he had not. And then came today’s news.

This was that Joyce will not face any charge as a result of events at the Sports and Social Club bar. A Crown Prosecution Service spokesman told that “Although there appears to have been an incident on the evening in question, evidence obtained from witnesses contained multiple inconsistencies and there is insufficient evidence that Mr Joyce committed any offence”.

This, though, was insufficient to cause The Great Guido to amend or retract the initial post: all that has happened is that Joyce’s Tweet about the lack of further action has been posted, with the headline “No Charges for Eric Joyce This Time”. No mention that the Fawkes blog jumped the gun and called it wrong again – and without waiting for due process to be completed.

Another glorious failure for the Fawkes rabble. And another fine mess, once again.