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The Magistrate's Blog (2005-2012)

This blog has migrated to www.magistratesblog.blogspot.co.uk This blog is anonymous, and Bystander's views are his and his alone. Where his views differ from the letter of the law, he will enforce the letter of the law because that is what he has sworn to do. If you think that you can identify a particular case from one of the posts you are wrong. Enough facts are changed to preserve the truth of the tale but to disguise its exact source.

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Location: Near London, United Kingdom

The blog is written by a retired JP, with over 30 years' experience on the Bench.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Just a Thought

A further group of people have been arrested in connection with the News International scandals (and I think that the plural is now justified) including Rebekah Brooks and her husband. I have no comment to make and am happy to let the law take its course, but one thought occurs to me:- if something like this had happened a few years ago to anyone but an NI insider in the days when when the Murdoch tabloid felt, with some justification, that it had special privileges, the squads of police who delivered the dawn knock on the door would very likely have had a Sun reporter and photographer in tow. Do you remember when one of Maxwell's boys was arrested? His feisty wife yelled from a window for her visitors to "Fuck off before I call the police" only to be answered with "We are the police". With any luck that kind of over-cosy potentially corrupt relationship between the press and the police will soon be a thing of the past. A friend of mine who once worked on a Fleet Street paper tells me that stories all carried a price to be paid to the copper passing on the tip off, expressed as 'a drink' ' a good drink' a well-decent drink' and a 'f*cking good drink'. The latter would be good for a couple of weeks spent somewhere sunny.

Jack of Kent commented on the shift in power here.

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