I have been a bit surprised by the number of comments coming in on an old post of mine on the Kercher trial, which has just concluded in Perugia.
I commented on British coverage of the trial when it kicked off in February, noting the tendency of the British press to assume that trials in other countries (even their beloved USA) are inherently unfair, and doomed to condemn an innocent Brit to a rat-infested prison, perhaps with an unshaven man in a sombrero drinking tequila in an outer office.
The foreigns, you see, don’t understand justice and good old British fair play. Their funny little legal systems are all right for them, of course, but couldn’t possibly be used on a British person. This attitude is everywhere, and feels like one of the last mental tendencies of Empire – if one of your chaps is in jail, send off a gunboat (or a snippy comment on the Telegraph website, in the modern variation).
Anyway, this is all by way of a long introduction to saying I was highly amused to see my post from February being the top Google result for “Italian justice” (hence all the traffic), and that the other three of the top four search results were Brits and Americans saying that the trial was a joke, and how could a pretty white woman possibly be judged by some greasy fascist winking at the girls as he drives round the Piazza Navona on a tiny little scooter? Screen shot below.
Screen shot 9.42 on December 5 2009