The NoW is bad news, but the police were just as bad in the Posh ‘kidnap’ case

Almost everyone dislikes the News of the World, including many of its readers. It is coarse, intrusive, hypocritical and sanctimonious. It frequently puts itself above or outside the law – perhaps most famously when it so whipped up public hysteria over paedophilia that the mobs took to the streets, in one case mistaking a paediatrician for a paedophile and driving her out of her house. The editor of the newspaper at the time was Rebekah Wade – now editor of the Sun – who invariably refuses to talk to the press or to be interviewed even when she sets Britain ablaze. A more disagreeable example of the new media aristocracy would be difficult to find.

So all our prejudices will have been confirmed earlier this week when a judge ended a trial of five men accused of plotting to kidnap Victoria Beckham. On 2 November last year the News of the World photographed the arrest of four Romanians and a Kosovan who were allegedly planning to kidnap Victoria Beckham.