Whats amused you (in the news) today ?

The use of the word "liberal" as an insult has always struck me as strange, to the point it seems to say more about the person using it than their target.

dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/liberal
"respecting and allowing many different types of beliefs or behaviour"
"willing to consider new or different ideas"
"believing in or allowing a lot of personal freedom, and believing that society should change gradually so that money, property, and power are shared more fairly"

I've been called far, far worse.

That's odd. I've seen some recent Matt Damon films and I thought he had already been replaced by a robot.

RE: The problem with retrieving the WhatsApp messages on BJ's old phone - I gather the PIN is the birthday of one of his children, so the odds he'd try the right one before bricking it are not good. 

Recapping the bullet points of the trial, you mean, for the benefit of those of us for whom this was new-news.

Seems it was a retrial of a small proportion of the cases he was originally charged with, after a previous jury failed to come to a verdict on those. If this was north of the border, I rather suspect "Not Proven" would have come into play.

OK....

Its a report of a trial which is itself a retrial of charges on which the jury could not reach a verdict.  The previous trial is therefore entirely relevant. The only mention of the previous trial by the BBC is this:

"The footballer, whose contract with Manchester City expired this month, was cleared at the earlier trial of six counts of rape and one count of sexual assault, relating to four young women or teenagers. But jurors failed to reach verdicts on two counts of rape and attempted rape, prompting a re-trial."

That is it. Period. There is nothing else in there about the previous trial or charges. Unless I'm missing something. I must have read similar statements regarding retrials across multiple media sources thousands of times over the years. For a whole range of different offences. Yet in this case its not because "journalism" or "news reporting" its because of institutional bias. Obviously.

The article also reports the defendant's solicitor as saying:

"This is the second time that Mr Mendy has been tried and found not guilty by a jury. He is delighted that both juries reached the correct verdicts."

Should they have omitted that because it refers to the offences of which he was found not guilty at the previous trial ?

this is how the (Murdoch owning) Times has reported it:

The sportsman was previously found not guilty of six rapes and one sexual assault, relating to four women, by a jury at a trial which ended in January, and cleared of one count of rape against another woman on the direction of the judge.

In total he has now been acquitted of eight rapes, one attempted rape, and one sexual assault against seven women following two trials.
...
During the course of the two trials, jurors were presented with a lurid account of the off-pitch antics of some of the most famous and well-remunerated young men in the world, which often involved heavy late-night drinking of vodka and Dom Perignon champagne — and sex.



Mendy’s largesse was notorious among his Manchester City teammates. If there was a party to be had on a weekend, it was likely being held at the Frenchman’s gaudy mansion.

England stars including Jack Grealish were among those to pass through its electric gates and up the tree-lined drive in pursuit of a good time. So too did dozens of women, some as young as 17 and many of whom hardly knew the host — if at all — but were enticed by the prospect of meeting football’s biggest stars.

etc. etc. etc. I'd copy and paste more, but I'd undoubtedly be into the realms of copyright breach, because there is probably at least 3 times that. Including this one liner:


The last party Mendy was to hold in August 2021 was among the biggest and the most debauched.

Good job the "liberal" ("aggressive liberals" ?) at the BBC aren't working for The Times, just think what their report might have said.