Lab Rundie

In 1946 the British government introduced free school milk for every child in the country. One third of a pint, every school day, from the age of five to the age of fifteen. The milk was whole. Full-fat. From British dairy herds. It was delivered to the school gate in small glass bottles with foil caps and left on the doorstep in metal crates, where it sat in the sun until morning break if the weather was warm and developed a slightly suspect taste that an entire generation of British adults can still describe with uncomfortable precision. The generation that grew up on school milk was, by every anthropometric measure, the healthiest generation of British children ever recorded. Average height increased. Bone density improved. Dental health, despite the sugar in everything else, improved. Iron deficiency rates among school-age children dropped. The growth charts that the Ministry of Health had been keeping since the war showed a consistent, measurable, year-on-year improvement that tracked precisely onto the introduction of the milk programme. In 1971 Margaret Thatcher, then Education Secretary, cut free school milk for children over seven. The tabloids called her Thatcher the Milk Snatcher. She was vilified. She kept the policy. The next generation of British children, the ones who grew up without the daily third of a pint, were measurably less healthy than the one before. The growth charts show it. The dental records show it. The conscription medicals, while they lasted, showed it. The thing the milk had been providing, the calcium, the vitamin D, the vitamin A, the complete amino acid profile, the conjugated linoleic acid, the fat-soluble nutrients that a growing skeleton requires in order to reach its genetic potential, was no longer arriving at morning break in a glass bottle with a foil cap. It was replaced, eventually, by nothing. Or by a carton of fruit juice. Or by a packet of crisps from the vending machine that appeared in the school corridor in the 1990s. The generation that drank the milk is now in its seventies and eighties. They are, on average, taller, stronger-boned, and longer-lived than the generation that came after them. The milk was not magic. The milk was milk. It was the thing the body needed, delivered at the time the body needed it, at a cost the government considered acceptable until it didn't. The cost of not providing it has been rather higher.

The police are under no obligation whatsoever to inform the general public of the progress of a live investigation. Why? Because if media (and social media loons) get hold of the wrong suspect's ID and details and spread it around, not only will it impede the police investigation, but it will also potentially ruin the life of an innocent person. In extreme cases, even if they have identified someone that police believes is the right person, publicity can be so overwhelming that their defence team could argue that there is no possibility of that person ever getting a fair trial as a result of the pre-trial publicity. We have "innocent until proven guilty" as a concept for a reason. Tommy the Sniff ended up being convicted of contempt of court in 2019 for interfering in trials, not just once but after he was already warned that it was dangerous to do so. This is what the High Court said about his case: - His online publication of details about the criminal case involved a breach of a reporting restriction order imposed under s4(2) of the Contempt of Court Act 1981. - The content of what he published online gave rise to a substantial risk that the course of justice in the criminal case would be seriously impeded, thereby amounting to a breach of the rule of contempt law known as “the strict liability rule”. - By aggressively confronting and filming some of the defendants in that case as they arrived at court, he interfered with the course of justice. He has set a trend in the UK of a) virtually any numpty with a phone and a blazing rage about something now calling themselves a "Citizen Journalist" with no training, no qualifications, no accreditation and, crucially, no understanding of journalistic ethics and rules and b) "Citizen Journalists" believing their own nonsense so much that they think they deserve to be told whatever they want to know, again with no concept of the damage that might do to the investigative process or the subsequent legal process. The police will issue CCTV and/or details of the Epsom suspects when it is safe to do so for the purposes of their investigation. Going on social media to rally the troops, turning up at the police station in numbers, blocking and lobbing projectiles at the police will not make them change their Standard Operating Procedures just because self-declared "Citizen Journalists" who don't know their arses from a hole in the ground believe they have a "right to know". Finally, and most importantly: have any of you self-important self-entitled men thought for a minute about what your actions would do the victim of this terrible offence if, through your behaviour, the investigation is impeded or a trial collapses? Of course you haven't. Because your "right to know" and "right to publish" as a self-appointed "Citizen Journalist" - and above all, your determination to spread racial hatred - is all that drives you.