The tyranny of lawyers

Ihave spent most of the morning trying to convince people online that Huw Edwards’s conviction does not mean that all, or even a majority, of Welsh people are sexually attracted to children. ‘We thought it was just sheep. It isn’t,’ one furious interlocuter named only as ‘Ned’ posted with what I assume he thought was bitter irony. Another mentioned that Edwards’s supposed ‘friend’, from whom he procured the disgusting photographs, was also Welsh and that there had been recent, very serious paedophilia cases in both Swansea and Cardiff crown courts.

This is a perfect example of how false news is generated. Long before the end of these lengthy and malevolent exchanges, someone had argued that Owain Glyndwr hung around nursery schools with a bag of sherbet lemons and that our first Welsh king, Henry VII, was born to a woman who was 13 years old.