- Unhappy birthday - 15th November 2024
- Migration story - 14th November 2024
- Numbers game - 13th November 2024
During 23 years with the BBC, and 40 years in journalism (when he was trained to use simple language, avoiding jargon) investigations would often take ages to complete, and these could last even longer in future with news now that the life span of those under scrutiny (as well as their lawyers) could be indefinite.
As human life increases, sadly it will also mean that the lives of crooks and liars will also lengthen, so that they can obfuscate for even longer, con ever more innocent people, or fit up their victims.
Several of the investigations I have conducted to expose them took months (sometimes YEARS) to complete, and now this will be EVEN LONGER!
The extremely difficult Cardiff Newsagent Three case, for example, took a summer to finish, because one of the young men jailed wrongly for murder had ‘admitted’ to committing the crime, and said the others were involved too.
The police concocted an overheard ‘confession’ in that one between two of the men they had arrested, when an admission was effectively made to the murder of the newsagent, and they presented before the court ‘EVIDENCE’ that the group had run from the scene, but one of the three had bad legs and couldn’t run at all.
That’s not the only miscarriage of justice either. I cannot lay claim to exposing all of them, but I KNOW it will have taken a very long time before those wrongly accused people were released from jail, and many of them have now become the subject of broadcast programmes.
The cases include: The Cardiff Three (Five), The Cardiff Newsagent Three, The Darvell Brothers, Jonathan Jones (The Tooze Murders), as well as Annette Hewins (The Gurnos Fire case).
However this shameful list does NOT have on it all those innocent people, who were convicted of less important crimes than murder, yet who now have a record which will affect them for the rest of their lives, and there is a powerful argument for scrapping altogether the police force involved (South Wales Police [SWP]).
Today we are in a situation where these investigations could be even more protracted, because those in the firing line will be able to muddy the waters longer, and their lawyers (or underlings) may continue trying to throw investigative journalists like me off the scent long into the future.
For most of human history, death has been a blunt fact of life, and people died because they were eaten, had an accident or developed an infection.
In 1950 global life expectancy was just 46.5 years.
But now that the world is richer and healthier, it is almost 72.
This is to be applauded, however the growing life expectancy of those who have done wrong, along with the increasing amount of time they are then able to spin a web of lies, is NOT!
Extra funds are being devoted by millionaires to postponing their eventual demise long into the future, (possibly indefinitely), although there is no suggestion that any of their activities are nefarious.
For instance, Bryan Johnson, a tech entrepreneur, has spent an estimated $2 million a year on his anti-ageing regimen, which until recently included blood transfusions from his teenage son (he has said these produced “no benefits”).
Those who share his interest in anti-ageing research include Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.
These people are entirely free from any wrong-doing (although Mr Musk has been accused of dubious actions), but others may not be – and longer lives will also, regrettably, mean LONGER investigations…
The memories of Phil’s, remarkable decades long award-winning career in journalism as he was gripped by the rare and incurable neurological disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book (which includes how he looked into the Cardiff Newsagent Three miscarriage of justice case) ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order the book now!
Unfortunately publication of another book, though, was refused, because it was to have included names.
Tomorrow – how during his long career, Phil always chose words carefully, but today the internet has prompted an explosion in BAD verse, notably poetry, with China marking a notorious 25 year old event with the words ‘The blood of the martyrs will not be shed in vain!’.
