Nicola Bulley cops leapt on the opportunity to berate the Press after their bungled investigation
Police farce
AFTER three weeks of fruitless searching, shambolic communications and own-goals over Nicola Bulley, police leapt on the opportunity to berate the Press.
We don’t blame poor Nikki’s family for it one bit.
They are traumatised and angry. But the Press did not “vilify” her friends and family nor accuse her partner Paul of wrongdoing.
Those baseless allegations came from a legion of TikTok morons and basement-dwelling conspiracy trolls who, if they have consciences, should be examining them today.
Police must have KNOWN that too, even as they agreed to read out the family’s statement attacking the media, two TV broadcasters and members of the public.
As a smokescreen for the cops’ own failures, it briefly worked.
READ MORE ON NICOLA BULLEY
But today we reveal more of the shameful shortcomings of their bungled investigation.
The attack on the media also gave the holier-than-thou BBC an excuse to lay into their rivals.
What rank hypocrisy — since they too gave Nicola’s disappearance blanket coverage, live-blogged the investigation and quoted from the very outlets they now criticise.
BBC’s Radio 4 gave one Press-hating obsessive a platform to conclude yet again that the Leveson Inquiry, the farcical media witch-hunt from 12 years ago, must be restarted.
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Predictably, he was never even asked for evidence of alleged Press misdeeds over Nicola.
Ironically, Leveson itself is largely to blame for some police failures. It effectively outlawed private briefings to crime reporters, once vital to the public interest in big investigations, creating an information vacuum for trolls to fill.
In Nicola’s case police belatedly filled it themselves by suddenly revealing her private medical troubles.
Britain needs more co-operation between police and the media, not less.
As for The Sun, we have had only enormous sympathy for Nicola’s family from the beginning, and especially so now.
Keep it down
JEREMY Hunt must use our surprise £5.4billion January surplus to kill two tax rises sure to harm our economy further.
He must rule out hiking fuel duty — and U-turn on the insane six per cent increase in corporation tax in April.
The Chancellor’s priority is to slash inflation. Fine.
These won’t be inflationary tax cuts, merely freezes. And he knows they make sense. “High-tax economies damage enterprise,” he admits.
It would be indefensible in the Budget to fleece families further or make the UK less competitive. We have just lost a new AstraZeneca factory to low-tax Ireland. Let’s not make matters worse.
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The last thing Mr Hunt should do with his windfall is surrender to the pay-rise blackmail of striking public sector unions. That WOULD stoke inflation.
Meanwhile, since no economic forecasters saw this huge surplus coming, can MPs stop hanging on their every word?