Law lords lose plot over ‘lotto rapist’
Why abolishing time limits for sex crime compensation claims may not be a victory for justice - and why Muslim mania is the new British disease. Read Mick Hume’s columns in The Times (London).
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Friday 1 February
‘To judge by the “Lotto rapist” case, the spirit of Jeremy Beadle is stalking the legal system. When the convicted rapist Iorworth Hoare won £7 million on the lottery in 2004 after buying a ticket on day release from prison, David Blunkett, who was then Home Secretary, pledged “to stop this happening again” and make the likes of Mr Hoare pay compensation. Some of us wiseacres dismissed this stunt as just another knee-jerk new Labour response to outraged headlines – silly and sensational, like Beadle’s pranks, but probably harmless…’
Tuesday 29 January
‘Islamophobia? It seems as if we are suffering more from Muslim-mania – an unhealthy obsession with all things Islamic, and a paranoid fixation with looking at the world from behind a veil. News that a leading awards panel has rejected a version of The Three Little Pigs for fear that “the use of pigs raises cultural issues” with the Muslim community, has been slammed as “multiculturalism gone mad”. But similarly unhinged attitudes are now common in government reports…’
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