Published On: Sun, Jul 22nd, 2018

Charlie Rowley sweats it out in “Novichok and Old Rope”, sponsored by Lucozade

It’s all over folks, everybody go home. The failed Skripal psyop, and its patsy mop-up second phase, has acquired all the characteristics of a rusty gate: it’s entirely inarticulate, and howls a lot when someone does try to move it. Right at the start of it all, it was said, here at FBEL, that the British Government would come unstuck with this one, and it has.

Indicating that there is trouble at t’mill was the instant Governmental rebuttal of a Press Association story (penned at the desk of a British Intelligence agency operative?) claiming that police had identified several Russians as being responsible for the Novichok poisonings in Salisbury. The next thing that anyone knew, Ben Wallace, the Home Office’s Minister for Security, tweets a response to the effect that the story is ill informed and wildly speculative. Perhaps here we see the public arm of Government telling the shadowy other that validation will no longer be so easily bestowed upon its tall tales. Maybe this explains why the Met Police has not issued an official statement since 14th July, the day after it said that it had found a “bottle of Novichok” at Muggleton Road.

The very next day after the public slap down, the tale about Charlie Rowley suffering in hospital was unceremoniously dumped. Perhaps there was no longer any need for it, given the cold water poured on British Intelligence’s attempt to accelerate a “Russians as culprits” narrative. This is not to say that Charlie Rowley won’t be retired without our hearing (though not seeing‡) of him again, because his particular circumstances require closure in the dim minds of the corporate-media believing public. In fact, this wind-down probably started today, with a Sun article that claims to have a firsthand account from the man†.

Charlie Rowley, or so it is to be believed, has been moved to a safe house, from whence he is said to have had a few words with the Sun. Naturally, no mention is made about the logistics of this. And needless to say, nothing of any significance is revealed – unless one counts the news that Charlie, who was supposed to have been foaming at the mouth when taken ill three weeks ago, is well enough to smoke cigarettes. How’s that, then? By now we are all conversant with the supposed effects of a nerve agent on the lungs “[which] produce more mucus… [making the victim] cough and foam at the mouth” (courtesy of the Guardian’s science editor).

But, it really is no good trying to rationalise the data that is coming from corporate-media into a coherent account of reality. When the people who write this stuff can get away with their crime scot free, then they will also make free with the mockery, and so it should be no surprise to see it extend to insinuations that Charlie Rowley got better faster by drinking glucose syrup; this from the Mirror:

We can reveal Charlie left Salisbury General on Friday after building up his strength and spirits by guzzling ­Lucozade and watching DVDs of classic films.

Matthew Rowley, who supplied films such as “Back to the Future”, has a different idea about what constitutes a classic; the term at chez Laurie will more likely be applied to a film like “Arsenic and Old Lace” – a comedy romp of slapstick murder by poison. Most appropriate.

Of course, the Lucozade story was undoubtedly an example of the horse manure that someone has been feeding Matthew Rowley since his visit in hospital to see a man he barely recognised but yet supposed was his brother – please see the FBEL article British Government beta tests the “Charlie Rowley with perfume bottle” narrative.

Matthew Rowley has been much quoted in the corporate-media as being very surprised at his brother’s recovery, but amazingly, nothing about the yarns that he was being spun from his source in “Salisbury District Hospital” (nominally, Charlie on the phone) ever did seem to faze him – not even the latest proffering:

It is thought he [Charlie Rowley] has not yet been able to remember where he and Miss Sturgess found the container [containing Novichok]…

Mr Rowley’s brother Matthew told The Sunday Telegraph his brother’s recollection of what took place was still “vague”, but he added: “He told me that they found something that looked like a perfume bottle. Dawn sprayed what was inside it on both her wrists and rubbed them together, like you do when you’re trying perfume.

“Charlie said she then gave the bottle to him and somehow it splintered or broke in his hands. That’s how he must have got contaminated.”

As has been explained here at FBEL before, the concept of Charlie Rowley’s selective amnesia is related to the apparent fact that police have not got any witness testimony that explains how a “bottle of Novichok” came to be at Muggleton Road.

It is quite easy to forget that police have not yet confirmed any report about Novichok in a perfume bottle. Forget corporate-media claiming to speak for Matthew or Charlie Rowley – police should have by now extracted the data from Charlie Rowley himself, and consequently they should be able to provide an explanation directly to the public. If this does not happen, then it points to the offending object having been planted – assuming that Rowley lives at the property of course (which we do not assume around here). [Additionally, we need to notice that police will not rule out the man and the woman in the Snap Fitness 24/7 CCTV footage as Rowley and Sturgess – see here].

The significance of the lack of official clarification is obviously proportionally related to the effort that has been expended in a good deal of blatant stalling; the police are always just about to get to the bottom of the matter:

Mr Rowley, 47,  a former mechanic and bar manager from Warminster, has not been told when he will be reunited with his brother. But it is understood that police are anxious that Charlie Rowley’s account of what happened should not be compromised by discussing it with other people.

Detectives will want the opportunity to extract as much evidence as possible from Mr Rowley, who remains a key witness in the investigation into the Novichok attack and the subsequent death of Miss Sturgess.

A source who has been briefed on the progress of the investigation said: “They want to get out of Charlie the best account of where he was and what happened so they can get to the bottom of this matter.”

Scotland Yard said: “We have been talking to Mr Rowley in hospital and we will of course be talking to him now he has been discharged. However we don’t intent [sic] to release further details about this process.”

So, the police are concerned about Charlie Rowley discussing the incident with other people, are they? Unless he discusses it with his brother who then, very helpfully, spills the beans to corporate-media and establishes talking points that are treated as if official narrative. But the best part of the above extract – and it is in fact priceless – is the bit about police wanting to get the best account out of Charlie. It almost could be an admission that Rowley would be coached – that’s assuming that he’s alive, of course.

Yes, this subject must be broached (and it has been – see the FBEL article, Treatment two: Snap Fitness 24/7 Bonnie and Clyde as patsies). That the State is controlling access to Charlie Rowley to the extent that even his brother doesn’t appear to know where he is, or when he can meet with him, could well be down to the fact that Rowley is dead. After all, there’s only one way to come out of hospital quickly after getting a dose of nerve agent, isn’t there? This is what Matthew Rowley said of the incident:

I found out about it [Charlie’s release] an hour ago from a reporter and I was surprised [the hospital] didn’t tell me.

I don’t know how it works after he’s released, I’m going to wait for the police to tell me.

Officially, it appears to be the case that Rowley has been discharged because he has recovered – but there is not a snowball’s chance in hell that this can be true, not according to a narrative in which he was made ill be the ingestion of a nerve agent. If he was ever initially sick, and if he was ever in the hospital, then he was discharged while he was still ill (improbable), or he is dead and has been disposed of (very messy – although a dead body did turn up near Salisbury on July 4th). In the author’s opinion, Rowley has never been ill with Novichok poisoning, and will now disappear one way or another so that certain facts can never emerge to sink the whole sorry saga.

Take for instance, the very real possibility that Charlie Rowley never lived at Muggleton Road. The returning reader will know that at FBEL there have been serious doubts in these respects: from Breaking news: police develop already woefully implausible Amesbury novichok scenario:

It appears incredibly doubtful – in fact it has been declared unbelievable – that Rowley could possibly be in possession of the property. Let’s put it another way: his living in Muggleton Road has not been explained satisfactorily.

If the corporate-media ever does release pictures of Charlie Rowley relaxing at home in Muggleton Road, it will only prove that he’s alive.

On Rowley’s discharge from hospital, The Times produced a very strange and child-friendly sentence regarding Charlie Rowley’s future living arrangements. It looked, to a certain eye, like conditioning whereby the public should not be surprised when Rowley doesn’t take up his old residency:

It is not known where [Charlie Rowley] will live because his flat has been cordoned off as part of the police investigation.

Here at FBEL it has also been subject of frequent complaint that there has been no back story in corporate-media about Charlie Rowley – nothing has been provided that could give a full and satisfactory explanation for why he lived where it was claimed of him. While we would like to discover whether or not Rowley has in his past been a member of the British Armed Forces, the only idea of any current occupation was supplied by the Mirror, which briefly referred to him as being a “labourer” – and if that is true, then we can infer less truth in the stories (as doubtful as they already were) that he received his Muggleton Road apartment from the local council; if he was employed, then surely his priority status plummets to barely eligible.

However, there is an episode from Rowley’s past that could explain his being mixed up in these current events. The following is reproduced from the Salisbury Journal:

A MAN caught with 11 wraps of heroin has been jailed for eight weeks.

Charles Rowley, 42, of Exeter Street, Salisbury also stole almost £1,700 from Matthew Rowley between March and July this year.

He was already serving a suspended sentence for driving while banned.

This was from 2015. At the heart of the issue is the possibility of a troubled man becoming compromised through committing misdemeanours; the placing of oneself into the hands of the Government, and introducing the risk of being manipulated from a position of weakness; of creating a position of vulnerability whereby mitigation for offences can be traded for cooperation with the authorities.

Rowley is not the only person in this Novichok production that has a history of prison time. In 2011, Sam Hobson, 21 at the time, was released after serving only nine weeks of a six-month jail term for stealing a bus in Amesbury and taking two 16-year-old girls for a joyride. The Salisbury Journal claimed that on his release, Hobson “contacted the Journal in order to speak out about his experience of prison and his plans for the future”. Does it sound normal? Maybe it was because Hobson thought he had become a minor celebrity: “I couldn’t believe all the hits on YouTube. I kept expecting to see it on TV on world’s dumbest criminals or something like that, people in prison had heard about it.”

The author’s initial impression of Hobson’s escapade is that it was executed with an eye to being notorious in a small town. Hobson, of course, became the centre of the nation’s attention when he was the first to introduce the Novichok talking point in relation to Sturgess and Rowley, as noted here at FBEL. Fame at last. But less flippantly, Hobson was the source of a story that has become established as a fact by dint of being repeated enough times: that Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess found an item on June 29th that made them ill. Is it, therefore, trustworthy?

 

† Update, 11.45pm, date as published:

This sort of thing tends to happen a lot. Having noted in this article that the Sun “newspaper” could not even back up claims of holding a conversation with Charlie Rowley by explaining the mechanics of how the interview took place, the said publication has now released a new article (11pm, 22nd July), that appears to attempt to clarify:

He was speaking to The Sun through brother Matthew, 47, who he called on a police “burner” phone.

And so we learn that the entire set of data presented by the Sun in its article examined here is of the same type of intelligence that has already been labelled “horse manure” on this page.

The Sun’s new article is a rehash of the old, with a couple of new doozies in it; here’s one:

Charlie said he can’t really talk on the phone. He said he can hear clicks and stuff like his calls are being listened to.

“His calls”. Quite the regular telephone-exchange Mildred, isn’t he?

This stuff is clearly designed to have people talk about Rowley as a detainee of police. It is meant to fuel conspiracy theory chatter that will nevertheless reinforce the concept that Rowley is where the authorities say he is. The reader may remember that there was a good deal of effort on social media to promote the notion that the Skripals were prisoners. The Skripals didn’t even get taken to a hospital.

‡ Update, 12/08/18: Since this article was first published, Rowley has appeared in an ITV interview. See the FBEL article Rowley’s found object and the Met’s poisoning material – and never the twain shall meethere.

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  1. Phil M says:

    One thing I did find curious in the Skripal case was that all key officials, people commenting in an official capacity in the media, were appointed shortly before the Skripals were allegedly poisoned. The list is as follows;
    Chief of Wiltshire Police, who’s predecessor had made controversial statements regarding a sex abuse investigation and the alleged involvement of high profile suspects.
    Head of Porton Down.
    Assistant commissioner anti terrorism and special ops, appointed 5th March 2018 the day following the Skripal incident. Who’s predecessor, coincidentally, has the same surname as the male victim in the second, alleged, poisoning.
    I do recall finding another, high profile, appointment at Salisbury hospital, shortly before the Skripal incident, but cannot find it now. If you were going to pull off a false flag op, you would want people properly prepared and in place beforehand. Am I being overly cynical or is it just one massive coincidence.

  2. P.F. says:

    So good Phil !
    Re: the ‘hospital official and sidekick moral support silent person ‘….media announcement, outside the main doors of the hospital, for the sake of ‘the stage effects for two year olds ‘ variety.
    The statements themselves were political in jargon: not phrased for medical purposes at all, in which case the SAID ‘ medical official’ making such political statements should have received immediate dismissal:
    EG:
    ‘ Two people were admitted for treatment for poising ‘

    SHOULD HAVE READ ” Two people were admitted with SYMPTOMS of

    SUSPECTED poisoning :

    ( a ) she is neither lab technician nor pathologist, so it is not her job to attribute cause nor effect .

    b) Even the lowliest nurse has legal training in medical phraseology.Mistakes thereby having the utmost serious consequences in accountability in regard to any possible subsequent legal actions arising from medical injury. Accordingly the hospital MEDICAL pronouncements made in public,must stick ONLY to MEDICALLY ACCURATE terminology)

    And ….just WHY would a hospital official find it within their remit to announce to the media that ANY patient(s) had been discharged !!!!
    Otherwise than to convince an incredulous public of the whole ludicrous .story …..UNTIL ‘ a DOCTOR ‘ !!!! “had said so ” .
    And which, it has to be said, WORKED! with regard to the belief that ‘the Skirpals must then, be real and the poisonings real too ………’.all that remained to be questioned then’ , according to so called ‘alternative ‘ media being the source and the motive . Pathetic .