So What's the Hold Up?

Regular readers will be at least aware of the Stephen Lawrence case. Back in 1993 a young black man called Stephen Lawrence was murdered by five men in an unprovoked racist attack in London, UK. Due to massive police and judicial corruption that was later termed "Institutional Racism" these five men were put on trial in 1995 but found not guilty. This provoked a huge storm of public outrage which led to the Macpherson Inquiry and eventually did away with the long held legal principles of double jeopardy and the right to silence.

Due to the eradication of double jeopardy in November 2011 two of the five men; Gary Dobson and David Norris were put on trial for the murder for a second time. Today (29/12/11) at around 14:30 the Jury were sent out to consider their verdicts. It's now around 15:35 and since then I've been to the shops, read the paper and had lunch but still the Jury has not returned a verdict.

So while we sit waiting to to see if the British education system has managed to produce 12 people capable of spelling the word "GUILTY" I may as well tell a little story;

One of the people at the centre of the initial campaign over the murder was a life long Labour party member called Rosalind Howells. She was rewarded for her work with a seat in the House of Lords and became Baroness Howells. This year she sent my grandmother a Christmas card in which she moaned about her daughter having cancer. I think this is what Hugo Chavez was hinting at in his recent comments. Of course by saying that Chavez has now given Britain some extensive clues about the level of access that Venezuela has to members of Britain's House of Lords so I've more or less given up apologising for insulting him.

In other news Britain is pretending that a British pensioner has go missing in Lanzarote and is requesting that the Spanish authorities search for her. I suppose that's one way of asking if there any countries Mrs Hogg can safely travel too anymore while encouraging the British people to holiday at home in order boost the national economy.