Byers explanation for lie 'gibberish', says judge

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Byers explanation for lie 'gibberish', says judge
By Alistair Osborne, Associate City Editor
(Filed: 15/10/2005)

Stephen Byers's explanation for his lie to MPs on the transport select committee was little short of "gibberish" a High Court judge said yesterday.

Giving his judgment in the case against Mr Byers brought by 49,000 Railtrack shareholders, Mr Justice Lindsay said he was baffled by the reasons the former transport secretary gave to the court for his "admitted untruth".

The judge said: "His explanation as then given seemed to me little above gibberish but it will be for Parliament to assess what he meant."

Under cross-examination on July 14, Mr Byers had been forced to admit that an answer he gave to the transport committee on Nov 14, 2001 was "untrue". He had been asked if there had been "any discussion, theoretical or otherwise, in your department before July 25 about the possibility of a future change in status for Railtrack".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/10/15/nbyers15.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/10/15/ixnewstop.html

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1. Byers: personal close encounter of the third (reich) kind.......

Steven Byers has a flat in Belsize Park, North London.

Some years ago I was at an afternoon barbecue garden party in the house next door to where he lives. It was a retirement do for a quite well known cardio-vascular surgeon who worked at the Royal Free nearby. Pleasant chap, pillar of society and all that, well known in the neighborhood etc.

Average sort of day, sunny, light breeze, charcoals smouldering away just how you'd expect given the occasion.

At about four o'clock, the sound of screaming sirens interupted an otherwise pleasant afternoon.

First about half a dozen cops burst into the garden via the back gate and started ordering everybody to the rear of the property.

Then a whole bunch of firemen attempting to drag in one of their huge hoses.......

True, the charcoals had been smoking a bit and some of the fumes may have drifted about a bit to the property next door. BUT.......

It soon became clear that SOMEONE in authority had made a complaint about the smoke and had thrown their weight about a bit to get something done about it.

Within a few minutes, the situation was resolved and the cops/firemen beated a hasty retreat. But not before a highly agitated Steven Byers had appeared in the garden of next door's property, effing and blinding that he'd been disturbed by smoke coming into his living room and what the hell did anybody think that they had the right to 'smoke him out' of his own home......

The editor of the local paper, the Ham N High, just happened to be one of the guests at the barbie and took a dim view of what had transpired.

After a few words over the garden wall with Byers, it soon became clear that the incident may well end up in the local rag if not the national press. And that the absurdity of an MP (this was about a year before his elevation to ministerial office in 1997) calling out the heavies because smoke got in his eyes, so to speak, may have been a teensy bit of an over-reaction......

The incident still makes me cringe everytime I seen his name/face in the papers....


End of anecdote.