Claims of a murderous paedophile ring at the top of British society were so outrageous, it is hard to believe that experienced detectives took them seriously.
That they did resulted in prolonged public agony and suspicion affecting a number of MPs, generals and senior figures in the intelligence services.
Accused figures had their properties raided and one of them lost both his home and his job.
Their accuser has now been declared a liar, a fantasist and a paedophile himself, and a senior judge has called for the police to be investigated.
For 18 months between 2014 and 2016, Carl Beech claimed that in the late 1970s and early 1980s he and other boys had been victims of sexual abuse by prominent British figures and that he had witnessed three child murders.
The Metropolitan (London) Police considered Beech’s allegations “credible and true” and launched a large-scale investigation, Operation Midland, whose raids on suspects’ homes were widely publicised by the media.
The investigation took two years, cost £2.5 million (Ksh313 million) and ended without a single arrest.
Matters were taken from the Met and given to Northumbria police, who found that while making his allegations, Beech was busy downloading child sex imagery and covertly filming a teenage boy.
Two weeks ago, Beech, aged 51, a former nurse, was jailed for 18 years after a 10-week trial on 12 counts of perverting the course of justice by inventing false allegations of murder and child sexual abuse.
The police watchdog, the Independent Office for Police Conduct, investigated the conduct of the Met officers and said there was no evidence that they misled a district judge who approved search warrants.
However, Sir Richard Henriques, a former High Court judge who was brought in to probe Operation Midland, identified 43 failings by the police.
He charged that the police had misled the judge into issuing warrants while knowing that Beech had not been consistent in all his claims. “A criminal investigation should surely follow,” he wrote.
A couple of weeks ago, we reported on the invasion of London and other European cities by electric scooters, widely considered to be nimble, fuel-efficient, eco-friendly and easy to handle.
Denmark’s capital, Copenhagen, has taken to this new form of urban transport with particular enthusiasm, introducing 7,000 e-scooters since January. But not everyone is happy.
Sunday Nation reader Abdi Hassan Ahmed, who lives there, says: “They make my blood boil. You will find an e-scooter on every corner, some with children as young as eight on them.”
Noting that some don’t obey the rules of the road, he describes an e-scooter running a red light and almost ramming a police bike outside the main railway station.
“At weekends, people who are drunk from a night in the town use the scooter to get home, which is very dangerous.”
Officialdom seems to agree. Police recently arrested 24 people for scooter riding while drunk or stoned. They face fines of up to £240.
Further, the Copenhagen Municipality is cracking down on the number of such vehicles, limiting the central areas of the city to 200 personal e-scooters and 200 rentals. Less crowded areas can host up to 3,000 owned vehicles and 3,000 rentals.
This column has carried several stories of carers taking advantage of vulnerable people to steal their money.
Edward Cairney and Avril Jones took the inevitable next step — they killed a teenager in their care and Jones claimed her benefits.
Prosecutors told Glasgow High Court that the pair murdered Margaret Fleming, 19, who had learning difficulties, in December 1999 and collected £182,000 in benefits up to October 2016, when it emerged that she had been long missing.
Her body has never been found. Cairney, aged 77, and Jones, 59, were each sentenced to at least 14 years in jail.
There was much excitement here recently when a heatwave arrived and temperatures soared far above normal.
A figure of 38.7 Celsius was recorded in Cambridge on July 25, making that the hottest day ever in Britain, surpassing 38.5 degrees in 2003.
Unused as they are to seriously hot weather, Brits have been reaching for unlikely superlatives, such as … The chickens are laying hard-boiled eggs; hot water is coming out of both taps; people are eating kali curries to chill their mouths off; potatoes are already cooked when you dig them up.
A European resident in Kenya was paying at a store checkout where the assistant happened to be eating a mango. It was the usual sort, with green/orange skin.
The man asked her, “Have you ever seen a white mango?”
He said, “Well, watch.”
Then he left. That’s it! Get it?
