The Wardman Wire

You are browsing the archives of beefeater.

The Net is covered today with reports of two Beefeaters (Yeoman Warders of the Tower of London) who have been sacked for “harassment”, and one who has returned to duty because he was not found guilty. This follows initial reports on the suspensions back around November 2nd.

Let’s state the basic point first: harassment is serious and should be dealt with appropriately, and nothing I am saying here aims to undermine that. Subject to appeal, there are disciplinary charges here reported consistently across all outlets.

Rather, I am interested in the other charges in this case. Some things reported don’t add up, and a Police Caution is being reported where there is no evidence whatsoever of any offence actually having been committed involving Wikipedia.

It is not yet clear whether confusion down to mistakes in the Tower of London or misreporting in the press.

The Independent is continuing it’s campaign against the use of Celebrity photographs and downmarket stories on highbrow newspaper websites to draw cheap traffic to boost web visitor numbers. Cool.

As you can see from today’s paper, the Indy front page is dominated by a high minded photo of Prince Charles who awarded the OBEs; no smiley blondes for the Independent.

Thank God they didn’t cheapen the campaign by running a downmarket photo of a pop icon with a caption such as – oh – “The showgirl and the Prince”.