Peter Rhodes: Beware of the butters

TODAY is US election day. It comes around every four years, dominates the world's media and is the very best day on which to bury bad news. Today sees the publication of the official, and deeply damning, report into Scotland Yard's ill-fated sex-abuse inquiry, Operation Midland. Pure coincidence, apparently.

"A BIG number but not a huge number." Total amount of customers' money cyber-nicked from Tesco Bank accounts over the weekend, as described by a Tesco spokesman. I bet some customers disagree.

THERE was a wonderful moment of shocked silence in Have I Got News for You (BBC1). You would imagine that two Neanderthal hunters had dragged a dead mammoth into the studio. In fact, what stunned the audience and briefly struck presenter Victoria Coren Mitchell dumb was the revelation by comedians Paul Merton and Andy Hamilton that neither of them carries a mobile phone. We non-users are a small tribe.

PEOPLE tend to assume that those of us without mobiles are being awkward or trying to make some sort of Luddite point. Not at all. We just feel more comfortable not being part of the great global herd of heads-down phone slaves who spend their every waking hour grazing on text messages like sheep in clover. Go on, try it for a day.

A MONSTROUS lie is doing the rounds. It goes like this: Fleet Street's chorus of disapproval over last week's High Court ruling on Brexit is an unprecedented, unique and a terrible attack on the independence of our courts.

THIS claim is, of course, absolute bunkum. Our legal system has been open to criticism for centuries. When any judge passes a sentence that is too harsh, too lenient or just plain nonsense, he or she can expect to find their photos in the next day's papers with a summary of their glittering career and a headline on the lines of "Judge Bonkers." Attacking the judiciary is a long and noble tradition for newspapers, campaigners and stand-up comedians, and a vital part of our free speech and democracy. The drubbing the High Court judges received last week is nothing unusual. Indeed, there must be dozens of judges, previously bruised by the newspapers, who are wondering what all the fuss is about.

WHAT is entirely unprecedented, and rather sinister, is the ludicrous over-reaction to criticism of the courts on this one issue, the European Union. The mock-outrage is being led by a BBC which was even-handed during the referendum campaign but is now busy creating the impression that our entire legal system is at risk from headline writers.

WHAT you are seeing is, of course, a conspiracy to overturn the people's Brexit vote. A key part of this campaign is to close down all criticism of the project, by painting the Press as villains and persuading politicians to utter dark threats about further controls on the media.

HOW can you spot the conspirators? They tend to use phrases such as "I fully accept the result of the referendum, but . . ." and "I believe in freedom of the Press, but . . . ." Beware of the butters.