Prolific and Predatory

Four hundred and fifty?

And not one of them ever said a word until he was dead and buried? Not a single, solitary one? Over 50 years? About a man who for most of those years was one of the most famous people in the country? For dirt on whom the tabloid press would have paid any amount of money that the informant might have cared to demand?

Ah, there's the rub.

Sir Jimmy Savile's estate ought to be distributed forthwith, in undeviating accordance with his last will and testament. All claims still standing after that will be deserving of further consideration and investigation, with no pecuniary motive. Those, and none other.

Meanwhile, how is the police investigation the business of the NSPCC, as such? It is a charity, and a very highly politicised one at that. It is not a public body accountable, at least in theory, to either or both of local government and of a central government itself accountable to Parliament.

This is rather like the sinister power of the RSPCA, another highly politicised charity with no democratic accountability, to bring prosecutions, leading its senior officers to appear on television outside courthouses wearing made-up uniforms and effectively impersonating policemen.