Re: The release of Learco Chindamo.

I was, in hindsight, rather setting myself up for this:

All the signs are however that Chindamo is that rare thing - a truly reformed character. Giving a convicted killer the benefit of the doubt is always going to be difficult, even when Frances Lawrence has herself apparently now forgiven him and magnanimously hopes for the best. Chindamo has to live up to what is expected of him, but to do that others have to take him into their confidence as well. The Sun, the rest of the media, and the public should now give him the opportunity and the space to do just that.

Oh. Obviously, we aren't aware of the full facts, it could turn out that it's been a case of mistaken identity, a malicious complaint or otherwise and so we should reserve proper judgement. Nonetheless, if he is subsequently convicted of an offence, the people he has let down most are not that those that saw the best in him and believed in his sincerity, but those who find themselves in a similar position, having committed a heinous crime and now desperately trying to convince the authorities that they are safe to be released back into the community. It's they that may well feel the chilling effects the return of such a notorious criminal to prison will almost certainly have on parole boards.

The release of Learco Chindamo.

[by Septicisle]

Back in 2006, the Sun was tipped off that the killer of headteacher Philip (see comments for the cock-up previously here) Lawrence, Learco Chindamo, was being allowed out for a day unsupervised from his open prison, part of the usual program of preparing prisoners for their eventual release, of which Lawrence's widow had been informed, if not told of the exact nature of his day out. Their article, headed "OUTRAGE", was under the by-line of John Kay, the Sun journalist convicted of killing his wifein a failed murder-suicide pact. Despite describing him as "not having a care in the world" and "swaggering" he was in fact pursued at length by the paper's team, even though they got the shots which would be used as he had first emerged from Ford open prison.

Today the paper splashes on his release from prison, having served two years more than the minimum which was recommended for his offence. The article, in many ways, is remarkably similar. Probably realising that they couldn't have gotten away with one killer calling another "evil", it this time fell to Anthony France to write the article, headlined "HEAD'S EVIL KILLER FREED". The pattern is exactly the same: his every move over the weekend was monitored, right down to the truly thrilling detail that he found himself on the wrong train platform and had to sprint to the right one. This time, rather than "swaggering" he was instead "strutting", although a "source" declared he was "strolling along enjoying the sunshine as if he didn't have a care in the world".

All of which is, it should be noted, with the exception of the description of him as "evil", is fair enough. The release of a notorious killer into the community is undoubtedly a matter of public interest. Far less fair are the same inaccuracies which almost always feature in any report on Chindamo. Firstly, that his appeal against deportation to Italy was granted on human rights grounds when it was not. The Asylum and Immigration Tribunal's decision was in fact based on the 2004 EU citizenship directive, and the government's appeal was rejected on the grounds of a subsequent 2006 EU immigration regulations, where the judge decided that Chindamo did not pose a "genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat" to society. It was in any case perverse that Chindamo could have been deported back to Italy - he arrived in London when he was 6, could speak no Italian and had no actual family connections in that country. He was a product, of this country and while he was responsible for his actions he should also be considered our responsibility, not that of a country he left as a small child.

The second inaccuracy is the continued assertion that Chindamo was still considered a threat back in 2007, not just repeated in the Sun's article and its leader comment, but also in the Telegraph. It's true that in the Home Office's submission to the immigration tribunal it says that "the appellant’s crime is of such severity that he will always continue to be a threat to the community such that his release on licence would be on the basis that he might be recalled to prison at any moment for any breach of his conditions". This however is the regime which all those sentenced to life in prison find themselves under when they are released on parole; they are on licence for the rest of their lives and any breach of their conditions, if considered serious enough, results in their instant return to prison. The other parts of the paragraph which are less willingly recalled directly contradict the claim that he still poses a threat:

In the revised reasons for deportation letter it is noted that it is unlikely that the appellant will re-offend, and that he accepts his responsibility for his offences and has undertaken courses for anger management

....

In this regard though we must bear in mind the point to which we were referred by Mr Scannell that that assessment was not made on account of the appellant being a threat to the public but because of the likelihood of media scrutiny and/or public interest. The letter does note that risk factors might increase because of media and public scrutiny that the appellant might receive. It also comments that the OAsys report notes that there are occasions where the appellant has overacted to situations and there are severe concerns with finding him appropriate accommodation on release if allowed to remain in the United Kingdom. He would need to be excluded from certain parts of the country, community integration would be a problem on release and he might suffer a backlash. The letter states that the appellant’s notoriety might make him feel excluded from society as he had been before and there was a significant risk that his previous disregard for authority and the law might resurface and result in him coming to adverse attention. As a consequence it was considered that he posed a continuing risk to the public and that his offences were so serious that he represents a genuine and present and sufficiently serious threat to the public in principle such as to justify his deportation.

In other words, the Home Office was not justifying his deportation on the grounds that he himself was a threat, but rather of what might increase the risk should he be released, which unsurprisingly is the media following his every move as it has so far done. If anything, it seems to be suggesting that the problem might be if he is forced to defend himself; far easier to dispose of him to Italy where no one would recognise him then have to draw up effective and also expensive plans to potentially protect him. It also has to be remembered that this was part of a letter putting forward the case for his deportation, where the argument was always likely to put as forcefully as possible. In any case, the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal at the time rejected it, and the parole board would have heard exactly the same arguments before making its decision, again obviously rejected, with any threat or risk decided to be manageable.

The Sun does at least at the end of their story give space to the statement issued by Chindamo's solicitor, which outlines his remorse and gives an indication as to how he intends to continue to atone for his crime. It doesn't however make mention of the how the deputy prison governor at Ford considered Chindamo to be one of the very few prisoners he had encountered who had genuinely made a change for the better, who if given a chance "would prove himself worthy of trust", probably for the reason that he tried to get the hearing held behind closed doors because of the press coverage of his day release.

The paper's editorial tone has also somewhat changed from back in 2007 when it declared he should not be released, although not by enough, and which again repeats the inaccuracies dealt with above. It also mentions another comment made, dealt with myself again at the time:

One fellow con said he showed not one ounce of remorse - quite the opposite, in fact.

The fellow con was Mark Brunger, and his comments were based on how Chindamo supposedly was while at a young offender's institution. Back in 2007 at best he had not had any association with Chindamo for 3 years - and at worst anything up to 7, and that's if we believe him.

That was just three years ago.

We can only pray that letting him loose is not a gamble with someone else's life.

And the Sun, as the Home Office set out, is doing its part perfectly.

All the signs are however that Chindamo is that rare thing - a truly reformed character. Giving a convicted killer the benefit of the doubt is always going to be difficult, even when Frances Lawrence has herself apparently now forgiven him and magnanimously hopes for the best. Chindamo has to live up to what is expected of him, but to do that others have to take him into their confidence as well. The Sun, the rest of the media, and the public should now give him the opportunity and the space to do just that.

A massive feminist victory for the Sun!

Back in December the Sun revealed the truly incredible news that a Premier League football manager had been visiting a brothel - although as a good majority of them are it was "disguised" as a massage parlour. It didn't however name him, claiming that they had been stopped from doing so by "creeping privacy laws".

Today the paper has named the manager, although I'm not going to because the paper, as then, has provided absolutely no evidence that he actually paid for sex. Even if he did, it seems that his wife couldn't care less, and has defended him.

A couple of wider points: the Sun's initial article resulted in a predictable wave of guessing at just who the manager was, most of them completely wide of the mark. Most fingered was probably Phil Brown, manager of Hull City, who had his Wikipedia page defaced as a result. Second, despite the Sun's claims about being silenced by the privacy aspects of the Human Rights Act there's still no ruling up on bailii.org referring to the case, and as it's far more interested in the lurid aspects of the story rather than the legal side, we don't learn anything about just how and why it was blocked from naming the manager until now. Lastly, and hilariously, the paper even tries to portray itself as cutting a dash for the women who had been working at the parlour, with a helpful quote provided by the charity Eaves:

"It is very damaging that a public figure could behave like this with seemingly relative impunity.

"We would prefer this issue to be highlighted so that the vulnerability of the women involved is not merely hidden from view.

"The conditions these women work in are often dangerous and, frankly, awful. Many live in fear of their lives and earn little, if any money."

Well, they certainly won't be earning any money now: as a result of the Sun's story the landlord has ended the parlour's tenancy. Presuming that the women working there were vulnerable and in danger, they'll almost certainly be in a worse overall position now. Another massive victory for the Sun's crusade for truth and morality!

It's that dastardly Human Rights Act again!

Shocking news in the Sun - a Premier League football manager has been caught visiting a brothel! It isn't the amazingly banal story we're interested in though, but the paper's claim as to why it can't name him:

Creeping privacy laws in the UK, based on the Human Rights Act, mean we are barred from naming him.

A nice try, but no. I might end up eating my words, but my guess at what's happened here, based so far on how there seems to be no specific news from other sites, no postings of rulings on bailii or boasts about representation on the usual media law firms sites, is that the Sun has been given an injunction barring it from naming the man until a full hearing has been heard, something which has been standard for years and has nothing to do with the HRA as yet. Indeed, yours truly was given an injunction back in 2006 by the lawyers of News of the World hack Mazher Mahmood for the heinous crime of posting photographs of the man over on my main blog. Also key here is that the Sun has not received a so-called "super injunction" like that which the Guardian did in the Trafigura case which prevents the paper from even mentioning the fact that it has been gagged.

Still, always worth a go blaming the Human Rights Act. That Times Newspapers (prop. R Murdoch) were one of the first to use the newly passed HRA to try and get out of a libel payment is neither here nor there, OK?

Can the Sun get a simple thing right? (No.)

The Sun's leader today again "confuses" the European Court of Human Rights with the European Union (url subject to change):

Yet he’s still here, costing us hundreds of thousands, because defending our own nation must take second place to EU human rights laws.

I say confuses because I can't be completely certain that the Sun isn't deliberately confusing the ECHR, which is connected with the Council of Europe, with the European Union, mainly because of the Sun's visceral loathing for the latter. It is however, as Nosemonkey notes, a reasonably common mistake, despite the fact that the ECHR was a product of the 1950s, while we didn't join the European Economic Community, the forebear to the EU, until the 1970s. We also had a major role in the set-up and drafting of the ECHR, which is another reason why the persistent claims that we're surrendering to Brussels over human rights is such abject nonsense.

In any case, the Sun's conflation will doubtless further cause resentment towards the European Union when it has nothing to do with it. On that point alone it registers as a mistake bordering on a lie.

The Sun v the Criminal Justice System and Gays

Once again there's a nice neutral headline in our favourite tabloid newspaper:

"Barmy Euro law let pervs abuse"

The article is about how two registered sex offenders were allowed to share a flat which is clearly the fault of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Sun claims that the police felt they were unable to tell their neighbours that they were in the area, because of a

"fear of being in breach of European Human Rights legislation on cohabiting same-sex partners."

What a load of rubbish. The ECHR doesn't say anything like this. In fact, homosexuality is not mentioned at all, presumably because it was drafted in the 50s when homosexuality was illegal in a lot of countries, including the UK. The nearest there is article 8: Right to respect for private and family life, which itself stems from an English case from the early 1600s that established the principle of "An Englishman's home is his castle". Effectively the Sun is raging against one of the basic principles of English common law: Why does the Sun hate our freedoms?

What is more likely to be the reason for this lack of action - if indeed that is what actually happened - is because of how people reacted in summer 2000 to the News of the World's anti-paedophile campaign, including innocent people being attacked. In any event, they were on the sex offenders' register, so it was already a matter of public knowledge.

The Sun also appears to be gay-bashing. It states that the men started a relationship in prison and then in the next sentence states they then targeted the kiddies. The Sun seems to be implying that homosexuality and paedophilia are one and the same or are in some way connected. The only people who take this line are those of a nutty, right-wing persuasion (see the Google search for homosexuality and paedophilia for examples). It implies this even though later on it states that one of the offenders had two kids.

The only positive to this article is that the Sun doesn't explicitly say that the ECHR was forced upon us by the Eurocrats, but the fact it uses the term "Euro" shows what it wants people to think.

War on Traditional English Liberties

There's an article in today's Sun making the usual claims about the Human Rights Act causing the destruction of the UK as it only helps criminals. The article then turns into a complaint about English common law, which from a paper which is prides itself in its "patriotism" is an odd position to take.

For some unknown reason they have an interview with the father of the murdered model Sally Ann Bowman who says that last month's unanimous ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that the government's DNA database goes way too far, is a disaster for the UK and he supports a national DNA database.

It is the usual "victims rights" nonsense (which I have previously covered) - that people who have suffered from crime are the ones that should be listened to more than anyone, irrespective of what they say. I can only hope that her father makes the effort to read the judgement, especially paragraph 125

"[We] find that the blanket and indiscriminate nature of the powers of retention of the fingerprints, cellular samples and DNA profiles of persons suspected but not convicted of offences, fails to strike a fair balance between the competing public and private interests and that the respondent State has overstepped any acceptable margin of appreciation in this regard [and it] constitutes a disproportionate interference with the... right to respect for private life and cannot be regarded as necessary in a democratic society."

I also guess that her father is unaware of the government's numerous losses of personal data that have been exposed over the past 18 months.

The Sun further states that the murder was only caught because he was only on the register due to previously being in trouble with the police. If that is the case it simply shows how poor the police are in this country.

What's interesting is the it states that the Home Office "fears it may only be allowed to take DNA samples AFTER someone is convicted". Has the Sun had a tip-off about the government's response to the ruling? Is it simply fear-mongering? Or is it both?

It then goes on and quotes her father complaining about the fact that nine year olds can't be prosecuted. He blames it on the HRA, but it is actually to do with the fact that there is a minimum age at which anyone can be considered to be culpable of a crime. The age limit in England and Wales of 10 years old is the joint second lowest within Europe, only Scotland has a lower limit of eight years old. In any event, he should be grateful of the current limits because until 1998 there was a rebuttable presumption that anyone under 14 years was incapable of committing a crime by the doctrine of doli incapax. He must want anyone of any age to be liable of a criminal record...

In fact the only thing about this article that is correct is that it doesn't state that the ECtHR is part of the EU or that the HRA was one of its directives.

The Sun supports the rule of law?

There is a very strange article in the Sun today.

Once again the Sun is outraged, which in itself is nothing new. This outrage has been sparked by the fact that a police officer - who was suspended for saying (on Facebook for bonus marks) that suspects should be beaten up - is to be allowed to go back to work after being fined an at tribunal and will be going back on full pay after having a year off. Again, the fact that it should be outraged by someone being allowed to do their job again after 'getting off lightly' (not a quote, more of a paraphrase) is also nothing new.

What is odd is that it calls the guy "vile" for what he did. I have no views on the case, as I don't actually know what happened, but this must be the first time that the Sun has ever condemned about anyone being part of the string-'em-up/hang-'em-an'-flog-'em brigade, see for example, its own coverage of the L. B. Harringay "Baby P" case.

Has the Sun seen the light when it comes the concept of innocent until proven guilty and also how to deal with people who are merely suspects? Only time will tell.

Rebekah Wade on Dacre's speech

Rebekah Wade's view of Paul Dacre's attack of Justice Eady (from Press Gazette):

Graham Dudman, managing editor of The Sun, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: “The issue here is that [Mr] Justice Eady is unelected and unaccountable. Parliament has not made these decisions, one man has.”

The Sun's editor, Rebekah Wade, agreed with Dudman. She said: "I think a lot of people will be surprised that he sat alone in the Max Mosley case because there's no jury in privacy cases. As a paper we agree with everything [Dacre] said. It is long overdue - in a democratic society with a free press it cannot be in our interest that one solitary judge is setting legal precedent."

Again, distortions half truths. Justice Eady is not making them up as he goes along, he is applying a law. There are higher judges that can overturn his decision.

What we do not want in this country is a press that is free to publicly, arbitrarily punish people that does not fit into its' fluid definition of immoral.

"Victim's Rights"

The Sun today has an article about Jack Straw's plans to, as the Sun puts it, "put the victims first".

It mentions the usual suspects - the Human Rights Act, political correctness and Labour being "soft on crime". The only scrapegoat it misses out is the Data Protection Act, presumably because it doesn't naturally fall within this particular group.

It quotes a victim of crime, who, while I am sympathetic to them, doesn't seem to be basing her views on any rational or half-way intelligent position. She seem to completely ignore or be oblivious to the fact that the Human Rights Act applies to everyone - that why it's called the "Human Rights Act" not the "Human Privileges Act" - not just people with an unblemished record. She must be completely unaware of the good that the HRA has done to the UK (a pdf from 2006 is available).

What the Sun doesn't seem to realise is that - as bad as it sounds - victims are probably the last people you should think of when designing laws. What counts is that there is a fair trial in which the Defendant is able to give his case - not what makes you seem hard in front of the tabloids or to try and out-do your opponents.

42 days detention

The Sun today mentions the current difficulties with Brown's plans to lock up innocent people for 42 days before the police decide to charge them with something or letting them go.

The Sun says it is likely that Brown will have to shelve this plan - for which we have to celebrate - and the Sun blames the current economic problems as being more pressing - which is correct - as the reason for doing so. You could say that every cloud has a silver lining...

Judging from the Sun's tone, it is obviously disappointed with this turn of events (this should be apparent from how it covered the debate in the Commons, which I mentioned in my initial post).

The only down side to this article is that the Sun suggests that Brown could use the Parliament Act to force it through. This would have to be passed by the Commons again and would almost certainly require a General Election as there is no manifesto commitment for the government to lock people up for this amount of time. Not to mention there's the minor fact that Brown would have to actually win an election...

The day the Sun went back to the Tories?

Incredibly positive coverage of Cameron's speech, not just on the front page, but also in the paper. Perhaps this, from the report on the speech, was key:

"Everything in Mr Cameron’s 64-minute speech smacked of a Thatcherite agenda, from strong defence to an end to the PC culture."

About the only note of criticism is from "5 Daves" which the paper called upon to comment on the speech.

Key though, as always, is the Sun's leader (url may well change):

"DAVID Cameron finally stood up yesterday and showed what he is made of.

Gone was the show pony politician. In his place emerged a tough leader, a young but credible statesman with potent ideas for rebuilding our nation.

Mr Cameron said the words his party wanted to hear. He echoed their hero, Margaret Thatcher, calling for “strong defence, sound money and the rule of law”.

...

But it will be the reaction of Sun readers that counts in the end.

This speech could have been lifted straight from a Sun editorial — from backing Our Boys on the front-line to mending Britain’s broken society.

Our readers want more classroom discipline, support for families and tax help for married couples. "

The perfect example of the Sun telling its readers what they want, when in fact, as the preceding sentence so vividly illustrates, this in what the Sun wants.

"A Tory government will call a referendum on the hated EU Constitution. It will end the abuse of the EU Human Rights Act and replace it with a sensible bill of rights."

How many times has the Sun repeatedly told this bare-faced lie? The Human Rights Act and the European Convention of Human Rights, on which it is based, have nothing to do with the European Union, and pre-dates our joining of the EEC, the fore-runner of the EU, by 23 years. One cannot wait to see what a "sensible" bill of rights will contain that the "abusive" HRA with its quaint rights to life, a fair trial, liberty and security, expression and marriage doesn't.

In conclusion:

"This was a powerful, coherent speech, addressing hard economic questions with sensible solutions.

Far from looking like a “novice”, Mr Cameron delivered the most confident and compelling speech of the political season.

“You can’t PROVE you are ready to be Prime Minister — it would be arrogant to pretend you can,” said Mr Cameron.

And he’s right. The Tory Party has come a long way under his leadership. There is much still to be done.

But with this nail-hammering performance, he showed he is more than qualified to give it a try."

Cameron has then passed the Sun, or rather, the Murdoch test: by so adopting their own editorial line, it's clear that he poses no threat to them or to Murdoch's business interests, hence he is now qualified to potentially be our prime minister. Those who object that one person, indeed, an Australian American, has such power to decide who is and isn't fit for government in the United Kingdom, ought to be worried: the last time this happened we were lumbered with Tony Blair for 10 years.

The Sun at the fringe.

Being one of the supposed politics editors on the Sun Lies blog is difficult for one short reason: the paper very rarely actually "does" politics. This doesn't mean that the Sun doesn't feature political stories; that it does. Rather, the Sun presumes that its readers aren't interested in politics as reported by say, any of the ex-broadsheets, but they are interested in policies, albeit ones which the Sun pre-decides they should be interested in and that have already been defined by the editorial team themselves. Hence the Liberal Democrats hardly receive any coverage at all, except when they're mocked or insulted; they are an irrelevance. When it comes to crime and law and order however, that's something the Sun knows its readers deeply care about. They deeply care so much about what their readers think about law and order that they provide the exact remedy which they themselves think would solve all our problems in a flash. Whether the readers actually agree or not is something entirely different.

It's therefore well worth pointing out that this year, for the first time ever, the Sun newspaper has been holding fringe events at the Labour and Conservative party conferences. These have long been dominated by the broads, holding stiflingly boring meetings with stiflingly boring politicians, never meeting a real actual person except the delegates themselves who turn up and become stiflingly bored as a result. They deserve something approaching credit for this, because the Guardian for example has been holding truly dismal sideshows where politicians make the case for their greatest ever respective member. No surprises to learn that Labour voted for Keir Hardie while the Tories chose Margaret Thatcher.

The theme of the events, in case you couldn't guess, is "Broken Britain", the Sun's now long-running theme on how the country bends over backwards to allow every armed chav to knife crime your son/daughter/husband in the face while the police and judiciary doing everything in their power to instead persecute the victims. I exaggerate slightly, but only slightly. There's no dispute that we have endemic, deep problems, especially in some of our inner cities, with gangs, crime, drugs and poverty, both of aspiration and wealth. The toll of teenage lives in London is undoubtedly sickening. There are however no quick solutions to any of these things, and the constant demands for immediate action, of which the paper never supplies any real point plan except to rip up the Human Rights Act and install zero tolerance only increases the chances of bad policy being made on the hoof. Politicians shouldn't give in to such demands, it's true, but the relationship between the media and the government has become so essential to the management of every day life that now those in powers have little choice but to take heed.

The first of these meetings, at Labour's conference last week, did not actually go especially smoothly from the Sun's point of view. Only one member of the actual panel - Michael Gove of the Conservatives - unsurprisingly considering the party's own views, agreed with the Sun that the country is "broken". Just so that the argument was not completely lost, the newspaper took the precaution of arranging for the relatives of those recently involved in some of the most notorious murder cases to be in attendance. Perfectly acceptable, of course, but what is not is the idea that this was their first opportunity to speak out or speak to politicians, nor was it all thanks to the Sun. It also distorts the true picture of crime, which almost everyone agrees has now fallen for the past decade, with rises in certain offences, but with the chances of becoming a victim of crime actually the lowest since the early 80s. The Sun never though has any intentions of being representative.

I've written previously about the tyranny of grief, the power of emotion and how it is almost unanswerable without coming across as ill-feeling or not grasping the full scale of what has happened to the individual - and the Sun knows this perfectly well. Politicians can do nothing but spout platitudes, pretend to feel their pain, and all it does is come across as false, which is because it is. It is impossible to know how they feel without having experienced a similar tragedy. Overwhelmingly though, emotion and anger are not good starting points to make policy from. This is obvious when you read what some of these traumatised individuals want to be done:

"In an impassioned plea she called for tougher sentencing, more police patrols and earlier action to identify potential yobs.

Brooke [Kinsella, whose brother Ben was stabbed to death], who later met Prime Minister Gordon Brown, added: “We need to get through at the grassroots. We need to get these kids before they even think about committing a crime.”

And just how exactly do you do that? Without exactly the kind of nanny statism and surveillance which is so decried, especially by the Sun, how are you meant to identify those likely to commit crime before they even think of doing it?

Apart from back-slapping, about the only real controversy at the Labour meeting was that Cherie Blair and Jack Straw clashed over why George Michael had only received a caution for possessing crack cocaine.

More stormy was yesterday's at the Conservative party conference. Like at the first, there was the outpourings which if anything suggest that some of those still involved ought to be attempting to move on:

"Marcia Shakespeare – whose daughter Letisha, 17, died in Birmingham gang gunfire – said: “The police try their best but what about the rights of victims? I don’t get answers to my job applications because I am stigmatised as the mother of a murder victim.”

I'm not sure that the government can be blamed for someone continuing to in effect stigmatise themselves.

The headline though was the merely inscrutable:

"VIOLENT thugs who kill and maim should forfeit their human rights, The Sun’s crime summit was told yesterday.

Grieving Paul Bowman – dad of murdered model Sally Anne Bowman – called for a shake-up of Broken Britain’s liberty laws at the Tory Party conference in Birmingham.

Paul, joined by Sally’s mum Linda, told the meeting: “In this country animals have animal rights and a dog has every right to be treated well and kept healthy. If that dog decides to act outside what we regard as acceptable – for instance bites a child – its rights are taken away and it is destroyed.

“When somebody decides, like the perpetrator of the crime against Sally, to go out armed with a knife to murder, leave it till the coast is clear and then rape, bite and desecrate the body of an 18-year-old girl, I believe that man’s human rights should be waived to a degree."

“I think there should be an amendment to the Human Rights Act where someone, if they step outside being a human being and commit an inhuman act, then the Human Rights Act does not apply.”

When then should someone lose their human rights? When they're accused of the crime? After they've been convicted? After a number of appeals? And what exactly is an inhuman act? How will we define it? The Human Rights Act has never affected the Sally Anne Bowman case in any shape or form: Mark Dixie is appealing against his conviction, but considering that the case against him was almost as straight-forward as they come, he's hardly likely to succeed. With a minimum sentence of 34 years passed, he'll be 70 before he can apply for parole. It sometimes has to be asked: how much more do they honestly expect the state to do? Bowman supports the death penalty, but you only have to look to America to see that it is no deterrent, especially against crimes such as those committed by Dixie, and it simply is not going to be brought back, however much a minority would like it to be.

There also seems to be a complete lack of perspective of what prison life is actually like, especially for those who commit crimes like Dixie:

"Paul blasted the “worry-free” life brutal offenders can lead in jails."

If worry-free is getting beaten up, excrement and spit put in your food and being in constant fear, then you have to wonder what sort of regime would be preferred. It hardly seems like Dixie will flourish in prison - the police officers who arrested him after an altercation in a bar were surprised he was crying over such a minor incident, until the DNA results came back.

It was again though the involvement of Blair which made headlines outside the Sun, with Cherie quite rightly calling the Tory MP Chris Grayling "specious" for offering the ripping up of the HRA as some sort of solution. The Tory pledge to bring in a British bill of rights has always been a joke, as all repealing the HRA would do is mean that applicants would have to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights rather than a British court, as the Tories would hardly be likely to withdraw from that institution also.

The Sun's job though had been done. It's presented, via those who have suffered the most from indiscriminate violence which can almost never be wholly prevented, the same simplistic solutions which it has been pushing from the very beginning. It points to Bill Bratton and his success in bringing down violent crime in New York and Los Angeles without mentioning that the number of murders in both those cities is far higher than the toll in London. It doesn't mention that part of what helped bring down crime in those cities, apart from zero tolerance, was the crime mapping that has just been recently introduced in London. He's quite right about the targets which do burden the police, and possibly about local accountability, but that also raises the spectre especially over here of the BNP effectively seizing control of neighbourhood policing. It also completely ignored the aspects of the debate which it rather wouldn't present to its readers, such as Blair's strong defence of the HRA, and Jonathan Aitken, along with Charles Clarke, robustly denouncing the Titan prisons plan which the Sun supports, as it does any prison enlargement. This is how the Sun's politics works: it comes to a predefined conclusion and sells at as if that was the one that was came to naturally. And that's partly why the newspaper has such control over politicians as a whole.

Those loony European judges.

The Sun is typically outraged that European judges are once again daring to interfere with our judicial system, this time over their decision to defer Abu Hamza's extradition until they have considered his appeal.

The paper though does its best to make this as clear as mud, only making clear that this is temporary until five paragraphs into its article, while describing the judges as "clowns" and as being unlikely to be a target in the "war on terror" due to their nationality. This is ignorant and misleading because while most are from European countries that have not been targeted by Islamic extremism, the judges are of just one section of the European Court of Human Rights, while the president of the court is French, a nation which has dealt with Islamic terrorism for decades, and one of the vice-presidents is a Brit. Additionally, Bosnia has definitely suffered from Islamic extremism, and Poland is also a potential target due to its involvement in the Iraq war.

It's the Sun's complete lack of context though which most rankles and misleads its readers:

"This is just the latest example of how Europe rides roughshod over the UK. It’s time we stood up and said enough and no more."

If this is meant to give the impression that this decision is something to do with the European Union, then it works judging by the response of commentators. In fact, the European Court of Human Rights has got nothing to do with the EU or its forebear, the European Economic Community. Rather, the ECHR and its base, the European Convention on Human Rights are connected with the set-up of the Council of Europe, one of the main suggestions of a certain Winston Churchill. The drafting of the Convention was done under the supervision of Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, with it being ratified by the Council in 1953, with the Court itself set-up in 1959. The ECHR serves as the last potential point of appeal for someone who has exhausted all the other options in Britain, and has done since that date. This is neither new nor Europe riding roughshod over the UK: if anything, it's our creation riding over our other own creations.

The reality is that Hamza's appeal is hardly likely to succeed, but the Sun cannot possibly miss an opportunity to attack both Europe and the human rights brigade, all while not informing its readers of even the slightest of contexts.

A longer version of this post is available on my own blog.