Tuesday, March 30, 2010

The BBC And The Left: A Criminal Joint Enterprise

Viewers of BBC 'North West Tonight' last Wednesday would have been baffled by the choice of lead story: a long segment was dedicated to the news that the mother of Jordon Cunliffe, one of the low-lifes convicted of the beating to death of Garry Newlove, did not approve of her son's murder conviction.

Personally, it made me nostalgic for the days when having a son who was a murderous thug was something parents tried to hide. In so far as she had an actual point, it was that she did not approve of the law on 'joint enterprise' - as she told us at great length. The victim's widow was allowed thirty seconds in the middle of the report, and sounded exactly like a woman still struggling to come to terms with the murder of her husband. Meanwhile, the Violet Kray of Warrington got the proverbial 'last word' in a long interview at the end where she was articulate, polished, poised - in a word 'coached'. Who exactly had trained her though was not something the BBC thought we needed to know. Then again, we never found out why, months after the trial, the BBC thought we needed to look again at settled law. But then, wouldcha believe it?
Two days before Sofyen Belamouadden was stabbed to death at Victoria Underground station during rush hour, a group called London Against Injustice were meeting just down the road in Westminster. Led by Bruce Kent, the famous CND activist who’s so Left-wing he even had to resign as a Catholic priest, which is saying something, the group were protesting against Joint Enterprise, a law that enables groups of people to be convicted of a murder, even if some of them had no direct part.
What are the odds, hey?

Not only that, but it turns out the folks at Lefties Against Justice have also anointed Jordon Cunliffe as their chief baby seal. Small world, huh?

Incidentally, we're supposed to find Cunliffe a sympathetic character because he's 'legally blind' - which only works if you don't know that the definition of legally blind is vision of 20/200 or less i.e. a legally blind person can see an object 20 feet away with the same clarity as a normally sighted person could see it from 200 feet away. None of which matters since the whole point about beating someone to death is that it's kind of hard to do from across the street anyway.

Needless to say, no one pointed this out on 'North West Tonight', which is a pity since - absent this attempt to claim victimhood - this is exactly the kind of case where 'joint enterprise' should apply. A mob of savages set upon an innocent man and beat him to death. Cunliffe's whole defence is that he was innocently administering a beating to the victim when some passing stranger murdered him - he was at the mob, not with the mob.

It's a stupid argument, but the point isn't to win anyone over yet. What the BBC and the left are doing is trying to put the law on joint enterprise in play, to rebrand it as a 'controversial' law that 'some say' needs to be 'brought into the 21st Century'. It's about how our impartial state broadcaster creates the right social environment for radical leftists to dismantle the law.

1 comment:

JuliaM said...

A bit harsh to compare this waste of oxygen to Violet Kray, DJ. Violet brought up her boys to train their sights on other villians, not members of the public..

Re: the Victoria savagery - the shopkeepers quoted in the newspapers all noted that there'd been an escalation of trouble with gangs over the last few weeks. I wonder if that accounts for the hasty meeting? Perhaps someone else could see this coming, as well as those poor shopkeepers.