Shutting up the press with a £1m threat

THE FRIDAY THING: WRITING a weekly newspaper column is a privilege and a pleasure (for me if not for the readers) but it carries with it certain responsibilities. Like, for instance, picking up a £1 million fine which is enough to make any scribe (and his or her editor) get an attack of the vapours and the jitters.

Efforts to silence the media have come from celebrities and politicians for many reasons. Their hope was to shackle the press, to stop journalists telling us who was up to stuff they should have left alone.

Over recent years only the media has effectively held those in authority, or the “famous”, to account, though admittedly not always for the purest motives.

Rogue elements in the media have cast a long shadow over all of us who have made an honest(ish) job of reporting the news and those who made it.

Newspapers throughout the country are struggling through these cash-strapped times and draconian fines would see many journals and journalists put out of business.

I know I’m hardly impartial, but is that really what the majority of us want to see happen?


OUR good friends the European Court of Human Wrongs has done it again, overruling a British law that enabled serious criminals who posed a threat to society to be kept in prison until they died.
According to European judges, muderers should be allowed to rejoin us on the streets, in the bars and the family home, irrespective of the threat they may pose.

The judges talk about compassion for the likes of Jeremy Bamber, who murdered five members of his own family to get his hands on their money. But what about the compassion these heartless killers showed to their victims? There wasn’t any.

There are currently 49 lifers in prison for horrendous crimes, including Ian Brady and Rose West who, with her husband Fred, murdered 10 young women. Does anyone honestly believe any of these killers should be allowed out of prison?

These murders carried out their many crimes in this country and it is in this country that their punishment should be fixed. The sooner we get out of the human rights court the better it will be for Britain.


FINAL WORD: I don’t think that anyone would disagree with the notion that people who are not British shouldn’t be allowed to come here for free medical care.
The cost to the NHS runs into hundreds of millions and causes lengthy queues for the rest of us.

The Government says GPs and hospital staff should check whether patients are actually entitled to treatment. But many doctors are reluctant to deny patients treatment.

These checks should be made at the point of entry, not in the surgery. Those who don’t qualify must go home for treatment - or pay the full cost.