There ought not to be anonymity for adult defendants in rape cases. Rather there ought not be anonymity for adult accusers, of whom Michael Le Vell's was not one.
But who is running the Crown Prosecution Service? Is anyone running the Crown Prosecution Service?
Bringing high profile cases on the basis of nothing more than conjecture, rumour, resentment of the fame of a working-class person in a popular television programme, and the attention-seeking, not of a small child, but of a manipulative adolescent who ought now to stand trial: this does not exactly inspire confidence in any prosecution that the CPS might ever again bring against anyone, for anything.
It is impossible to see how one other impending trial, in particular, can now proceed with any hope of not being laughed or jeered out by any 12 people who might conceivably be impanelled for it.
The CPS lot do not like Coronation Street, its viewers, or the way in which it enables the lower orders and provincial types to get above themselves. That is the prerogative of the CPS lot. But conducting this kind of vendetta, and that at public expense, is not.
Bringing high profile cases on the basis of nothing more than conjecture, rumour, resentment of the fame of a working-class person in a popular television programme, and the attention-seeking, not of a small child, but of a manipulative adolescent who ought now to stand trial: this does not exactly inspire confidence in any prosecution that the CPS might ever again bring against anyone, for anything.
It is impossible to see how one other impending trial, in particular, can now proceed with any hope of not being laughed or jeered out by any 12 people who might conceivably be impanelled for it.
The CPS lot do not like Coronation Street, its viewers, or the way in which it enables the lower orders and provincial types to get above themselves. That is the prerogative of the CPS lot. But conducting this kind of vendetta, and that at public expense, is not.
Moreover, this girl talked about "getting the evil out", and her mother turns out to be obsessed with paranormal phenomena, including the Devil.
This sounds more than a little like the 1980s panic over Satanic abuse, which, even for those of us who have no doubt whatever about the existence and the enormous power of supernatural evil, has turned out to have had all the factual basis of unicorns or of alien abductions.
Similar claims are now circulating about other figures, living and dead. This is literal witch-hunting, which calls seriously into question the continued viability of the CPS. I ask again, who is running it?
No one who moved in the same social circles as the CPS, or who appeared in the kind of television programmes that the CPS enjoyed, would ever have been arrested, or possibly even interviewed, on so little "evidence".
The Chief Crown Prosecutor for the North West, Nazir Afzal, had decided not to prosecute Le Vell, but he was overruled from London by Alison Levitt QC, who ought to be required to pay back the cost to the taxpayer of this whole vicious circus, most obviously by taking away her pension entitlement.
But the class and regional dimensions, though important, are only the start of this.
Those who hunted witches in the 1980s were not motivated by religion as generally understood, but if anything by the very reverse. Keir Starmer is the classic figure from the upper-middle-class Far Left who has ended up running Britain's institutional life, and he is doubtless surrounded by the same.
Northern and working-class men who have dared to make good through the various branches of entertainment now have a great deal to fear, even though they are effectively guaranteed to be acquitted by juries.
Even then, newspapers and associated websites will go bananas with rage and print no end of nudge-nudge, wink-wink articles, backed up by highly organised foot-stamping on Twitter.
But the real threat is to those who recognise the reality of supernatural reality and of its relationship with the natural realm.
Tonight, Channel Four is to show a programme in this vein on Sir Cyril Smith, but it was clear from Oliver Kamm's tweet at the time of Sir Cyril's death that the real problem with him was his opposition to abortion.
Such a view, or the view that marriage ought only ever to be defined as the union of one man and one woman, or anything even vaguely of that kind, including simple belief in God, can now expect to be defined as proof in itself that the person who holds it is a child abuser, aggressively tweeted along by the likes of Oliver Kamm.
So much for this.
This sounds more than a little like the 1980s panic over Satanic abuse, which, even for those of us who have no doubt whatever about the existence and the enormous power of supernatural evil, has turned out to have had all the factual basis of unicorns or of alien abductions.
Similar claims are now circulating about other figures, living and dead. This is literal witch-hunting, which calls seriously into question the continued viability of the CPS. I ask again, who is running it?
No one who moved in the same social circles as the CPS, or who appeared in the kind of television programmes that the CPS enjoyed, would ever have been arrested, or possibly even interviewed, on so little "evidence".
The Chief Crown Prosecutor for the North West, Nazir Afzal, had decided not to prosecute Le Vell, but he was overruled from London by Alison Levitt QC, who ought to be required to pay back the cost to the taxpayer of this whole vicious circus, most obviously by taking away her pension entitlement.
But the class and regional dimensions, though important, are only the start of this.
Those who hunted witches in the 1980s were not motivated by religion as generally understood, but if anything by the very reverse. Keir Starmer is the classic figure from the upper-middle-class Far Left who has ended up running Britain's institutional life, and he is doubtless surrounded by the same.
Northern and working-class men who have dared to make good through the various branches of entertainment now have a great deal to fear, even though they are effectively guaranteed to be acquitted by juries.
Even then, newspapers and associated websites will go bananas with rage and print no end of nudge-nudge, wink-wink articles, backed up by highly organised foot-stamping on Twitter.
But the real threat is to those who recognise the reality of supernatural reality and of its relationship with the natural realm.
Tonight, Channel Four is to show a programme in this vein on Sir Cyril Smith, but it was clear from Oliver Kamm's tweet at the time of Sir Cyril's death that the real problem with him was his opposition to abortion.
Such a view, or the view that marriage ought only ever to be defined as the union of one man and one woman, or anything even vaguely of that kind, including simple belief in God, can now expect to be defined as proof in itself that the person who holds it is a child abuser, aggressively tweeted along by the likes of Oliver Kamm.
So much for this.
According to the last census, we who recognise the reality of supernatural reality and of its relationship with the natural realm are still three quarters of the population.
But whether that will be reflected in the composition of juries, only time will tell.
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