The sixth Stephen Lawrence suspect, Matthew White, should’ve been in the dock for a jury to decide his guilt - or otherwise - in a racist murder that rocked our nation.
Details of how the Metropolitan Police botched the investigation into him is cruel for Stephen’s parents, Doreen and Neville, who with their killed son were failed by officers who disgraced the force and denied a family the justice they deserved.
Once again we’re reduced to hoping and urging that lessons are learned when it is too late for Stephen but not too late to change for the better a Met rebranded institutionally racist by Louise Casey, an independent peer who found much that remains rotten in the country’s premier police service.
White certainly had a case to answer before his death and it is a pity he cannot be questioned properly to get to the truth when the signs are he played a role, perhaps a leading role, and used Stephen’s murder to chillingly intimidate a Black shop worker he later assaulted.
Ignoring pay rises for nurses hypocrisy at its worst
Cheating nurses, doctors, teachers, police officers, armed forces, prison officers and senior civil servants, among others, by ignoring wage rises recommended by pay review bodies would be untrustworthy Rishi Sunak and a dishonest UK Conservative Government provoking fresh confrontations.
Because the refusal of Ministers from the PM down to promise that recommended awards would be honoured is the bad faith of a cynical Tory regime proving to be utterly valueless, wreaking havoc by treating key workers with total contempt.
Not so very long ago the same mob was lecturing trade union leaders the review bodies were sacrosanct, a holy route to salaries.
To hint now that it might deny workers the increases likely to be proposed is the hypocrisy of a twisting Conservative administration losing its way completely.
Prigozhin would be worse than Putin as commander-in-chief
Onetime partners in crime turned bitter rivals, Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin is one of the few people who would be worse than Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin.
The uneasy truce between the monstrous pair is unlikely to last long so this is a fight people in democratic Europe, particularly invaded Ukraine, would love both tyrants to lose.
