Cops’ claim they’re too busy to nail online paedos shows their priorities are in chaos
Viewing child abuse pictures is not a victimless crime
OUR police cannot let paedophiles who leer over child sex abuse pictures online get away with it.
What a repugnant message it would give these creeps, and the children exploited to feed their sick habit, if Britain no longer took the offence seriously enough for criminal penalties.
We accept that cops must prioritise those most likely to pose a real threat to kids.
But it sticks in the craw to hear them protest, as Chief Constable Simon Bailey does, that the problem is simply too vast for the justice system to cope with.
Especially when police devote incredible manpower to other spectacularly ill-judged and fruitless investigations: failed witch hunts over fantasy allegations about “VIP sex abusers”.
A fixation on “hate speech” and social media trolls.
An obsession with exposing public-interest whistleblowers who embarrass their forces.
Our cops’ priorities are in chaos.
One minute Sara Thornton, head of the National Police Chiefs Council, says they are too busy to turn up after burglaries and need instead to focus on sex offences and cyber crime.
The next her underling says police are too busy to nail online perverts too.
Yet they DO have time to prosecute a woman who kept a £20 note she found lying around in a shop.
Viewing child abuse pictures is not a victimless crime.
And there’s surely one guaranteed consequence of decriminalising the perverts who do it: a dramatic rise in their number.
Tainted tycoon
EVEN £363million won’t be enough to save Philip Green’s reputation.
We welcome that he finally did the right thing by bailing out the BHS pension fund.
But the tycoon knew eight months ago what he needed to do.
He had to be strong-armed by politicians and an avalanche of bad publicity.
Swanning belligerently around on his yacht in the Med, as his former staff worried about making ends meet in retirement, Green has become the poster boy for corporate greed.
We can’t see him ever fixing that.
Crazy compo
HAS Liz Truss lost her marbles?
The Justice Secretary’s decision to increase compensation payouts will cost much of the country a fortune — while lining the pockets of the personal injury lawyers who lobbied for it.
Ms Truss claims she had little choice. And it is true that awards needed a tweak to allow for today’s rock-bottom interest rates.
But to alter them so dramatically that they will add £1,000 a year to young drivers’ premiums and £1billion to the NHS compensation bill is madness.
The Government is now said to be thinking again . . . and quite right too.