Published On: Thu, Jul 12th, 2018

The Big W stands for Wiltshire windfall – and police guards for Charlie Rowley

Charlie Rowley lives! – and his recovery might yet be more miraculous than that of the Skripals, who themselves achieved Lazarus-style restoration the likes of which has not been seen since the Bible. Supposedly having been exposed to a “substantially higher” dose of the same nerve agent that hurt the colonel and his daughter, Rowley was nevertheless out of a coma quicker than a bout of diarrhoea, and faster than  either of the Russians (Yulia, who recovered first, was 20 days under). This too from someone whose days were numbered not forty-eight hours ago, and was “just alive with the machines”. Granted, this opinion was attributed to the mother of Rowley’s girlfriend, the late Dawn Sturgess, but the fact that it was in the public domain was not her doing; obviously someone wanted to create an expectation of Rowley’s imminent death.‡

Having been hospitalised for 10 days, more or less, news came on Tuesday (10th July) that Rowley had regained consciousness, but was still in a critical condition. By the following Wednesday [i.e. the next day – to be less clumsy about it], Salisbury District Hospital let it be known that he was no longer critical, having made “further progress overnight”. Police, we are told, had been able to speak to him.

In a statement, Scotland Yard said: “Officers from the investigation team have spoken briefly to Charlie and will be looking to further speak with him in the coming days as they continue to try and establish how he and Dawn came to be contaminated with the nerve agent.”

Some might say that there was no time to lose, given that a murderous object†, that kills by contaminating innocent people with deadly nerve agent, remains undetected – and that the children might pick it up already. With such high stakes, didn’t the police want to press the information from Rowley while there was still a chance to do it? Didn’t Rowley, like Jimmy Durante (in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World) with one of his many dying breaths, feel compelled to tell someone about The Big Dubya and where to dig (for buried treasure)?

Hang on there, the reader will be saying. The man’s not five minutes out of a coma. Is this treatment really being fair? Well, yes it is, according to information provided by Charlie’s brother. Matthew Rowley visited Salisbury District Hospital on Wednesday, and although he made such comments as “It was quite shocking. He’s not the Charles I know… I hardly recognised him to tell the truth”, we will assume that the man he met was his younger sibling.

Matthew Rowley reported that Charlie had been told about Dawn’s death. Charlie also knew why he was in hospital, and had access to a TV; indeed, “He’s watched himself on the news… He just laughed and said: ‘I’m famous now.’”

In all fairness, while it can’t be said of Rowley that he is malingering, he certainly appears strong enough to speak and save the children from the missing killer novichok pots; and if the police really thought that the public was in any danger from these villainous items, then they would have wrung the information out of him.

But this is still unfair, the reader is surely saying; you see, the reader has probably read a Guardian article that explains why any early interrogation for the purposes of expeditiously launching a mission to save Salisbury from buckets of nerve agent would be pointless:

Detectives from Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism command believe they may have to wait days for Charlie Rowley to regain his memory and the ability to focus on the questions he is being asked.

Apparently, Rowley has lost his memory. The Oxford Dictionary is on the phone; they are looking for a new definition for the word “convenient”.

Moreover – and this isn’t remotely suspicious, is it? – Matthew Rowley was expressly forbidden to enter into conversation that would have tested the assertion that Charlie had suffered amnesia regarding the circumstances of any poisoning:

Matthew Rowley said he was accompanied by a police officer during the visit to hospital and that he and his brother were not allowed to speak about what happened.

He said: “He knows why he’s in there. At the moment, I think he’s just living by the hour. There’s quite a few police officers outside his door. I had a policeman with me and he was telling me you can’t talk about that. I’m not allowed to talk about the cause and where it happened.”

It wasn’t long ago when the only place where the sort of scene described by Matthew Rowley would play out was in a film about Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia. It occurs to the author that there are a number of reasons why this unusual arrangement for the interview might have been in place – the reader must decide which one is most likely. Firstly, Matthew Rowley was not allowed to discover that his brother did in fact have full recall, but could not explain what had happened to him. Secondly, Charlie Rowley was liable to say something that the police did not want him to. Thirdly, Matthew Rowley was liable to say something that would affect Charlie’s account of the incident – although it’s highly likely, if Charlie has been watching TV, that he has been told via that medium that he became ill by handling the missing novichok pot.

It was noticed that Matthew Rowley thinks that Charlie’s continued restoral to health is something that could change from day to day, but here at FBEL the view is taken that measures appear to have been put in place to ensure that an eventual full recovery is on the cards (he has, after all, already “amazed medics” with his progress thus far), and that there is no need to be in fear of a reversal.

In other, not wholly unrelated news (from the Salisbury Journal):

THE government has today announced more than £5 million in funding to further support businesses, boost tourism and meet unexpected costs as a result of the incidents in Salisbury and Amesbury.

This new package is in addition to the £2.5 million that has been made available since March to support the local community.

Today’s package includes:

  • £997,000 to support Wiltshire Council’s response and recovery costs
  • £927,000 to provide immediate support to local businesses and to counter their loss of earnings
  • £870,000 to boost the vital tourism industry in the region, including £570,000 for free parking and park-and-ride services, in the South Wiltshire area.

In addition, the Home Office has approved a further £2.5 million in special grant funding to cover extra costs incurred by Wiltshire Police, taking the total provided to the police since March to £4.1m.

So that’s nigh on £2 million to help local business adopt a “never-mind” attitude. Nigh on a £million to feather council departments. But the doozy, of course, is the £2.5 million “special grant” to cover “extra costs incurred by Wiltshire Police”. The cynic might well call this “pay-off” money, given that the expanded Skripal incident is 24 carat, diamond encrusted and, as it turns out, tax dollar stealing horse manure from top to bottom.

Get the shovels – here’s Jimmy Durante’s Big W.

 

‡ It has been noted that news of Rowley’s recovery literally came on the heels of the publication of the previous FBEL piece discussing the fate of patsies who might have been decoys for the Skripals, and anyone else in the Salisbury down-and-out community who might be considered inconvenient in terms of the maintenance of a particular narrative.

† see the FBEL article, Sturgess murder enquiry should start with the Snap Fitness 24/7 Bonnie and Clyde

It's important to donate to FBEL - please see here to find out why
A PayPal account not required.