Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

Ello ello ello…

Britain's smuggest policeman, Sir Ian 'Menezes' Blair, has followed up last week's condescendingly batshit insane comments about knives with another headline-grabbing but intellectually challenged load of old bollocks.

Fire away, Sir Ian:

He said they might ask: "I can see that behaviour, you convince me that you're taking talcum powder because ... that's an unusual way to take it."

Sir Ian added: "My position is that a sensible jury would not expect people to be sniffing talcum powder."

In the original PA story, hastily repeated by other outlets including The Sun and the BBC, SIB's worldview was unquestioningly adopted by the churnalist cobbling it together:

Prosecutors often do not charge those caught on camera because police cannot prove what substance they are taking.

Though it isn't made clear that prosecutors can't prove what illegal substance they are taking. What happened when a journalist actually questioned SIB's nuttiness? It, er, turned out not to be as factual as it had been depicted. This hasty addendum appeared:

The Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald QC, said: "I'm extremely surprised by comments attributed to Sir Ian Blair.

"If he is accurately quoted he appears to have completely misunderstood the law. The issue was not whether the white powder that Kate Moss was snorting was cocaine or talcum powder.

"The law required us to prove that it was either a class A drug or a class B drug. We could only base our case on one of these options.

"It was impossible for us to do this since cocaine - a class A drug - and amphetamine - a class B drug are both white powders.

"The analysis attributed to Sir Ian Blair is therefore completely wide of the mark."

"Any suggestion that the CPS does not prosecute celebrities is completely untrue - we will prosecute when the police provide us with sufficient evidence to do so."

Ha, ha. Blair has been pwn3d!

The Beeb have redone their story to include the savaging of Blair, to their credit. But what of those other news outlets - have they left his comments untouched and unclarified in the light of new information, ie that he hasn't got the foggiest about what the law is, according to the DPP?

Hmm well the Sun have just added McDonald's comments onto the end, but they have kept the rest intact. Which is bonkers. You can't write SIB's nonsense about talcum powder, and then just include a quote by someone who is a prosecutor, directly contradicting it, and think you've done your job.

But then, given that this kind of 'celeb snorting something' video is a speciality of the Sun and the other red-tops, I wonder if that might be a little inconvenient for them? After all, if it's true, it exposes their wafer-thin justification for these stories - that they could be benefiting the public by exposing criminal activity. And simply leaves them as the prurient, intrusive rubbish they surely are.

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