Stupid newspapers

I hate hate hate the mainstream meeja in this country. Why can't they just report the facts of a story at least once per year? No, everything has to be misquoted, out of context or simply made up.

This of course is because there's no investigative journalism anymore, just merely churnalism - regurgitating quotes - whether there's any truth in them or not.

This Judge Bean dude for example was supposed to have let a feral youth, who had sworn at police, off a £50 fine for his breaching section 5 of the public order act - essentially suggesting according to the newspapers - that it is OK to swear at the police as they hear bad language all the time.

Wrrrrrooooooooong.

Even the Police head cheeses haven't bothered to check the facts of the case. Neither did Boris Johnson, but he's mad.

Here's what happened right. A dude was arrested and gave the police a mouthful of verbals. He was fined £50 for a breach of section 5 of the public order act, which is something like harassing, alarming or distressing people with naughty words and making angry faces.

However, in order for someone to be charged with this offence, the witnesses - in this case the police - have to actually state that they felt harassed, alarmed or distressed. They didn't. They didn't because the prosecutor, who I imagine works in a call centre now, forgot to ask them. D'oh!

It's not enough that the feral youth just said the naughty words - they have to have caused harassment, alarm or distress and it needs to have been recorded that caused these things. Otherwise you could get arrested for merely saying the F word.

The prosecutor didn't bother to ask the police if they felt threatened because he was assuming they had and this is what the Judge's judgement was referring to. He was saying the court can't just assume the police felt harassed because they hear language like that all the time in their line of work and if a policeman swooned or fainted every time they heard the F word there'd be no police force.

There has to be clear evidence of harassment and there wasn't here as it wasn't recorded, so no case. Bad prosecutor, bad reporting, good Judge.