Matthew Baker Word-Retailer Retreats

MATTHEW Baker, political aide to Simon Danczuk M.P. for Rochdale for the last eight-years, is about to leave his master.  This move follows a series of hectic events involving Simon Danczuk and his wife Karen, culminating last week in Mrs. Danczuk being taken to Court for rent arrears owed to a landlord of a property on The Walk, and a embarrassing interview with Mr. & Mrs. Danczuk for The Sunday Times.   

Yesterday, Rochdale Online described Matthew Baker as follows:

'Mr. Baker's  methods have at times been controversial, during the 2010 election campaign he was exposed as having a number of accounts on internet forums and using those accounts to support Mr. Danczuk and attack his opponents and critics.' 

There have been claims for months that he used a number of aliases together with various addresses to attack local enemies of Danczuk in letters to papers like the Rochdale Observer.  Suggestions exist that Danczuk has visited Kashmir financed by the Azad-Kashmir Government to the tune of over £3,000, and a local Bangladeshi has told Northern Voices that Mr. Danczuk visited Bangladesh to see the opposition leader before the U.K. General Election. 

Speaking this week to Rochdale Online, Baker said:

'I've worked with Simon since 2007, and am very proud of what we've achieved together.  I was delighted to have played a part in helping him gain a massively increased majority last month.  But after eight years I feel ready for a new challenge and am looking forward to doing something different.' 

Mr. Baker worked for the Channel Four Dispatches program entitled 'The Paedophile M.P.: How Cyril Smith got away with it' in 2013, and at the same time did leg-work for the book that he later published with Simon Danczuk titled 'Smile for the Camera:  The Double Life of Cyril Smith'.  In the end, according to Rochdale Online 'it was in fact Mr. Baker who researched and wrote the book'.   

And yet, both Baker and Danczuk have been incredible shy about how the research for the book was accumulated, documented and recorded.  Rochdale Online says above that 'Mr Baker's methods have at times been controversial'.  In the writing of the book the methodology has been mysterious in the extreme, and Northern Voices was told Mr. Baker was taken aback when a victim of Smith at Cambridge House, Eddie Sharrock, told him in 2014 following a BBC interview they did together, that he found aspects of the Danczuk and Baker's book on Smith somewhat incredible. 

Neither Simon Danczuk or Matthew Baker attempted to enlighten the audience, when they had the opportunity while addressing the gathering at a book reading last Autumn at the Rochdale Arts and Literature Festival.  Instead, when asked for details about their research and methodology for the book, Mr. Danczuk and Mr. Baker had Karen Danczuk usher the questioner out of the now defunct Danczuk's Deli.  (For more see  www.demotix.com/news/6093696/simon-danczuk-and-matt-baker )

Just over a week ago my son was in his car stuck at the traffic lights near Gordon Riggs' Garden Centre in Newbold, when he glimpsed in the corner of his eye a baseball-cap and beneath it a vaguely familiar plump body with his little legs jogging on the spot waiting for the lights to change to 'GO'.  Unmistakably, it was the M.P. for Rochdale, Simon Danczuk, straining at the leash to get away. 

Matthew Baker has now got away from the seeming eternally lively melodrama that envelopes and drowns the Danczuk family on a daily basis, and even, or so it seems, the endless extended family of Burkes and Taylors et al.   No one is safe in this frenzied folly of allegations and accusations.  A Labour leader of the Council falls and is replaced.  Others are defamed amid allegations of cover-ups.  A black politician is harangued in the Courts for 'homophobia'.   Trash the Trolls!  Blame your brother!  Call for an over-arching enquiry here!  Tease an apology from Theresa May there!   Sink your teeth in a bacon butty!  Take a Selfie or two of Karen's 'Ding Dongs'!  Swig some Cava by the pool on the Costa Blanca while demanding Lord Janner be disrobed in disgrace.   So much righteousness and flowery flannel in this belated demand for justice from Simon Danczuk and Matthew Baker, one wonders if it has all become too much for Mr. Baker to keep a straight face.

Malcolm Muggeridge wrote in his autobiography 'Chronicles of Wasted Time' in 1972, that the 'quest for justice continues, and the weapons of hatred pile up; but truth was an early casualty.... the lies of advertising, of news, of salesmanship, of politics!  The lies of the priest in his pulpit, the professor at his podium, the journalist at his typewriter!  The lie stuck like a fish-bone in the throat of the microphone, the hand-held lies of the prowling cameraman!'   

Ultimately, I suppose the struggle may become all too much for all of us, even for men with the thickest skins.