The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

PM admits data losses may be inevitable | Politics | The Guardian.

There is truth in what the PM says, as sometimes happens. To err is human and errors are "inevitable" as long as people are involved. But that's not the point. Forget the data stick. What about the papers a Minister left on a train? A civil servant was recently prosecuted for doing the self-same thing. He was convicted, fined and the press reported he "narrowly escaped jail". Will the Minister be prosecuted?

"Be you never so high, the law is above you" is the classic statement of the rule of law. We common lawyers would argue it was the founding statement of a free society, uttered by a judge in expelling a king from "his" court. More than anything, I hate New Labour for the way it protects its own – the way that there is one law for the aparatchiki and another for us. Is the Crown Prosecution Service an independent law enforcement body, or a pliant agent of the government? I think it's time for it to prove the former.