Stop Starmering

That Martha Kearney may not necessarily be the sharpest tool in the box has, on this occasion, proved to be her USP, as I believe that they young people say. Unaware of how it would reflect on her own bosses at the Beeb, she dared to mention that, while the present Director of Public Prosecutions may have been named after the first Leader of the Labour Party, he has a long history in the sort of politics that that party was set up in order to arrest and prevent. Just like those who have since taken it over and destroyed it. And just like those who are now running the BBC, among so very many other things.

That it is now under the control of a man who was on the wrong side in the Cold War, but who refuses to say sorry, is as good an excuse as any to question the very existence of the Crown Prosecution Service, with its secret trials whereby the charged are acquitted without any opportunity to confront their accusers in open court, while in any case that does make it that far the open trial is little more than a sentencing hearing, the fact of the prosecution's having proceeded being taken as the proof of guilt.

It is instead time to revert to prosecution by the Police, using local firms of solicitors who build prosecution work into their general workloads. As much as anything else, acquittal without trial is as repugnant as conviction without trial. And either on the say-so of an unrepentant sectarian Leftist (or Rightist) is as repugnant as anything could possible be.