Is there a new police investigation called Operation Fernbridge ?
Let’s look at this. My initial reaction when I saw this was that a very clever journalist, perhaps under legal restrictions not to write about Operation Fairbank, had written the story and changed the name of the investigation but other news outlets are referring to Operation Fernbrrigde and after applying Occam’s razor I have to accept that I must have been wrong about that.
Operational code names are supposedly random but that is not strictly true. There will never be a police Operation Penis or an Operation Hitler. Operational code names are meant to be distinctive, that is their purpose but even a casual observer can see that both Fairbank and Fernbridge are two syllable words, each syllable beginning with the same two letters, and that judging from the description of Operation Fernbridge it has exactly the same range and focus as Operation Fairbank.
I’m baffled, why have the Met done this ?
I’d be grateful to anyone who can offer a rational explanation.
*Just to note that the best answer received so far is that the code names represent ‘in jokes’. I really like this explanation because I like a copper to have a sense of humour. But I’m not convinced
stoopid plod do not need operation this or that. They need to investigate and get evidence. That’s it
fairbank was the ‘scoping’ bit of the process – the change of name maybe reflects that it has now move into a criminal investigation and is therefore a different process
Either way, the hoped-for intention is Fuck Brittan.
My guess would be that Fairbank is looking at more than one possible investigation. It was described as a “scoping exercise”, implying it is not itself an investigation, and could be an evaluation of the possibilities of several different investigations, presumably into different targets.
Fernbridge, then would be a case where one of these investigations has been deemed worth pursuing, and the investigation itself is proceeding under that name.
I think it’s interesting that the press have linked Tom Watson MP’s original allegation to, or at least spoken of it in the same breath as, three different possible cases of Tory abusers: the apparently innocent, litigious, and Machiavellian Lord X, the deceased Thatcher aide Peter Morrison, and now the targets of Fernbridge, whoever they may be. But in fact we have been given no reason to believe any of these are connected to evidence in the Peter RIghton case (that Watson mentioned when clarifying his original parliamentary question.)
It may well be the case that Operation Fairbank continues to evaluate other lines of inquiry, hopefully including the evidence that Watson referred to, and that we might see further “spin-off” operations. I may not be the most up-to-date person, but I’ve seen no reports that Fairbank has concluded.
it’s all getting too big for 6 police to act in secret, as a squad allegedly is.
I am having doubts daily about anyone of any note being collared
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/police-seize-vip-list-in-dawn-1546351
Apparently Operation Fairbanks relates to a scoping exercise as a result of the comments made by Tom Watson about paedophile links to former cabinet ministers, whilst Operation Fernbridge is more directly investigating the allegations made about specific incidents at the Elm Guest House.