Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The DPP was never much cop

An interesting development for our police force, then. In future they do not have to believe everything someone tells them, in the manner of a particularly credulous village idiot. They may be allowed, possibly encouraged, to exhibit a degree of curiosity in their line of work — have a bit of a think about things, maybe even ask questions. I do hope they are able to cope.

They have been institutionally cretinised for a long while now — ever since Alison Saunders was appointed Director of Public Prosecutions in 2013. She is stepping down when her contract comes to an end in October and is anxious to take
up her new career opportunity as under-manager of a whelk stall in Cleethorpes (I think I’ve got that right).

Saunders was, of course, catastrophic, perhaps as dismal a public servant as we have ever had. Not merely incompetent, but possessed of an evangelistic liberal zeal that sought to turn justice on its head. Under Saunders there was little room for that tired old shibboleth, innocent until proven guilty. In rape cases the defendant was required to prove that he had obtained consent from the supposed victim, and furthermore obtained it being entirely confident that the supposed victim was not drunk, or out of her box on narcotics, or perhaps merely distracted by worrying about whether or not she’d left the oven on at home.

Saunders was never able to answer the question: but what if the man is drunk too? How can we prove that he had given consent? Perhaps he woke up the next morning with dark clouds of regret. It happened to me in July 1985 — I had sex with a midget, the last woman standing in the pseudo-goth nightclub White Trash at three o’clock in the morning.

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