The Standard reports that two of the suspects might be tried for the murder. I think it's reasonable to question trying people for crimes when they've been committed before, but I'm suspicious that some of the people who say this wouldn't be saying it if the suspects were black.

I'm also expecting the following gems to get rolled out again:

1) The Inquiry should have just looked at who committed the murder and not done all the other shit.
2) The Inquiry said all policemen are racist
3) Black people do crime, so not surprising the police don't like them
4) What's wrong with randomly stopping black people?

The Mail have disabled comments.

Reckon they might be taking seriously the need not to prejudice cases.

Was it not the Mail who were the first to take up this case? Stephen's father did work for Dacre or something like that.

It was indeed. That must have confused a few of their readers.

Not necessarily. As was said at the time, it helped salve their "I don't mind them as comes here to work" conscience while at the same time driving a wedge between 'respectable' black people and the feral underclass of all races.

Chris Rock did it a lot better though.

Plus of course the Mail isn't exactly reluctant to have a go at the police. They might not have got their first target but it wasn't a bad consolation prize.

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Reclaiming "methinks" for the nation

Latest blog post - 2011 - a review (updated 07/10)

Yup - it was the mail who published the infamous 'Murderers' front cover, with the subtitle of 'if we're wrong, sue us', or somesuch....

I think even that would have been confusing to some readers. To be fair to them, given what's said in Flat Earth News about The Mail, you can almost understand it.

Stephen Lawrence works for the Mail as a convenient get-out, as much as calling the BNP 'vile' when agreeing lock stock and barrel with their policies. How can the Mail be racist when they've done so much for the memory of Stephen etc etc?

Well, to be fair to the Mail, they don't come out and say "We hate anyone not a British WASP". They often give the impression that they just love people of other extractions*. As long as they behave and obey the law. And let's be fair, the mail will castigate anyone who doesn't do that - as long as they're not a pie-chomping sales executive from Corby, and the law in question is automotive speed-related.

But the thing the Mail does very well is suggest that while it would love to embrace all the residents of these isles and love them all, the black chaps do kind of bring it on themselves by constantly acting like a mash-up of Presuming Ed**, Stringer Bell*** and Louis Farrakhan. Sitting on their arses, selling crack and hating whitey.

*The Express is another matter altogether. And as for the Sun, well, it's nothing if not savvy to the prevailing folk wisdom.

**Fat bloke at the end of Withnail and I.

***The Wire's brilliant eminence grise behind the Barksdale Crew.

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Fifteen seconds... you can't breathe.

Twenty seconds... you give up and turn off the Jeremy Vine show.

Which is what I'd have said if I'd been clever enough.

Indeed the Lawrence case was a major cause célèbre for the mail and its Sunday sibling but my memory fails me as to whether they were so nakedly racist at the time.

In those days, it could be argued that they were far more likely to court the membership of the RAC than the BNP.

Sure, they took a swipe at the French and the Bosch every now and again but they were far more focused upon Scargill, Livingstone, Kinnock et al during that era. If I recall correctly,it was not until the turn of the millennium that they started ramping up their circulation-boosting agenda against Muslims (fear), asylum-seekers (resentment) and Eastern Europeans (uncertainty.)

I do wonder whether their taking up of the Lawrence case was actually an act of decency. Gulp...

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