Back in June 2017, I said that the charred ruin of Grenfell Tower should be kept as a memorial to national stupidity. 

I wrote: ‘They should leave the burned-out Grenfell Tower where it is, as a lasting monument to the needlessly dead and as a warning to our complacent, self-satisfied society.

‘Shore it up, fence it off, and set a great stone slab next to it with a list of the names of those who died. Write on it in deeply incised, enormous letters “They Did Not Need To Die”.

‘Hold an annual service of remembrance at it, to which the great and the good feel obliged to go. 

We congratulate ourselves quite enough at such ceremonies – it is time we chastised and humiliated ourselves instead.’ I hold to this view.

I am not surprised that the authorities now want to remove Grenfell from the skyline. It is a reminder of so many things which are wrong with our country and the way it is run. 

This is not just about housing or safety or incompetence or anything in particular. It is about the contrast between our national vanity and the reality. This is even more true now.

We will not fix this, or anything, until we grasp that we are no longer rich, or powerful or important.

Grenfell Tower smoulders after the devastating blaze in 2017 in which 72 people lost their lives

We are, in reality, a crummy, dirty, dangerous, cheapskate, crime-plagued, drug-haunted housing estate – but with nuclear weapons and a seat on the UN Security Council. 

As I said then and say again with renewed force: our grandiose, unusable (and probably inoperable) Trident missile system allegedly protects us from enemies we don’t have in a war which ended 34 years ago. 

We think we are so great and wonderful and important that we can launch wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria, and stir them up in Ukraine. 

But we could not even protect the victims of Grenfell Tower from horrible, needless deaths that a child could have foreseen.

Theft puts us all behind bars

Roaming round the fanciest supermarket in my suburb, I began to notice little yellow signs in the shelves among the merchandise. Accompanied by a picture of some handcuffs, they say ‘Shoplifting has a price’, adding lamely that ‘you could be arrested, jailed or fined’. In truth this is unlikely to happen. Instead, we will all be punished by being treated as suspects.

The sign in Peter Hichens's local supermarket, which attempts to warn shoplifters of the possible punishments for their crimes

The sign in Peter Hichens’s local supermarket, which attempts to warn shoplifters of the possible punishments for their crimes

A Washington DC supermarket I used to use, favoured by the rich and famous, is so beset by thieves that it now treats even its grandest customers as guilty. 

It has a wire fence around the shopping floor, and checkout turnstiles that you can’t pass without a receipt.

The serious figures who now doubt Letby’s guilt

For those of us who have now, for many months, doubted that Lucy Letby was fairly tried and convicted, the last week was momentous.

You may not yet realise the huge medical brainpower of the panel which has now looked at the

case and concluded that there were no murders, just a hospital so badly run that in a well-run country it would be shut down. But you will. I notice that this fact has been grasped by serious figures who previously stood back from the row. Here’s what I ask of those who still insist that Ms Letby is guilty, on the basis of no evidence at all that she ever harmed anyone.

See it, Say it, S*d it 

Anyone who travels by train is tired of the ceaseless ‘See it. Say it. Sorted’ announcements which urge us to text the British Transport Police if we need help.

But the other day, after my bicycle was pointlessly and expensively mangled by a failed thief outside my local railway station, which is covered by CCTV, I thought I’d give it a try.

The response to my text was a series of questions about my ethnicity, gender, gender at birth etc. I suspect that if I had carried on with this prying, futile bilge, they’d have wanted to know my sexuality too. They also, of course, wanted my home address. If they had hoped to ensure that I gave up and forgot the issue, they could not have arranged things better.

I could see this ending with the police accidentally giving my home address to the vandal, and simultaneously losing the CCTV footage. I abandoned my attempt, muttering, ‘See it. Say it. S*d it.’

Stop going on about her bearing in the witness box. She was heavily medicated at the time and had suffered a breakdown before the trial began. She had spent five years under suspicion, her career was in ruins, she had been arrested three times (and released twice) and had her garden publicly dug up by the police for reasons I still don’t grasp. She had spent almost two years in prison as an unconvicted woman. How would you appear, after that? I doubt you’d look or sound good.

Can they please stop complaining that her miserable, hysterical ramblings on paper, written during therapy, were a confession? She has always denied the charges.

Can they please stop referring to dud statistics supposedly proving she was present at all the deaths. They don’t. But, above all, can they please stop saying that the campaign for a reopening of the case should cease because it distresses the parents of the babies who were allegedly killed or hurt.

Those who say this did not attack the police investigation into the alleged crimes, when it was most certainly distressing the parents involved. Nor did I.

And how would it benefit those parents for a miscarriage of justice to go uncorrected?

I look especially here at the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting. I thought that, in general, ministers steered clear of involvement in court cases. But Mr Streeting, back in September, said that the campaign to re-examine the Letby case was ‘crass and insensitive’, citing the grief of the parents.

He also asserted: ‘There is no purpose to a media campaign.’ But there was. Without that campaign, in my view, Dr Shoo Lee’s Brains Trust of brilliant medics from all over the world would never have assembled. They would never have done the amazing work which has now been published.

Meanwhile, Lady Justice Thirlwall’s foolishly prejudiced inquiry, forbidden to consider the possibility that Ms Letby is not guilty, grinds idiotically on. Might she one day regret dismissing the protests of justice campaigners as ‘noise’? I suspect so.

***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk