Peter Rhodes on American justice, Bulgarian cunning and the right way to remember D-Day
Short guide to the American legal system, as explained by one of Fleet Street's finest covering the Trump trial: “ While the jury had to unanimously agree that something unlawful was done to help Trump's election campaign, they did not have to agree on what it was.” Why do I keep thinking of Alice in Wonderland?
Honest, decent Brits who fall on hard times can spend weeks or months haggling for a few quid from the Department of Work and Pensions, and getting nowhere. Yet five Bulgarian fraudsters managed to hijack 6,000 identities, set up three “benefit factories” and milk the system of a staggering £54 million before they were nicked. It raises some troubling questions.
How did these five crooks, operating in a strange land in a foreign language, become so skilled, so clever, so dextrous and so organised to set up and run such an empire? Where do such people learn how to operate hundreds of mobiles at the same time, when most of us can barely change a mobile battery without referring to the manual? How did they become so confident and assertive in dealing with the authorities when normal people tremble with terror and sound horribly guilty the moment they dial the DWP number?
