DoubleThink

From the BBC:

BBC television presenter Ray Gosling is to be charged with wasting police time after claiming on air that he smothered his terminally ill lover. He was arrested on suspicion of murder and freed on bail after the broadcast.

The CPS said he had been summonsed to appear before Nottingham magistrates on 14 September.

The summons alleges that he "caused wasteful employment of the police by knowingly making to Bill Turnbull a false report tending to show that an offence had been committed. Contrary to sec 5 (2) of the Criminal Law Act 1967".

Absolutely bizarre. Unlike e.g. a bored young woman who goes to the police to allege rape, which has to be investigated and wastes oodles of police time and well as causing terrible distress to the suspect (see JuliaM for a compendium of these stories), all that Ray G did was to announce, on air*, that he had once hastened somebody's death.

Maybe he did, maybe he didn't, but shouldn't the CPS or the police (or whoever it was decided to arrest him) have applied some thought to this question first before barging in and making complete idiots of themselves?

Can we charge them with wasting their own time, Ray G's time and our money?

* Had Ray G actually walked up to the front desk of a police station and claimed, untruthfully, to have killed somebody, then that would have clearly been wasting police time.

Here's one I prepared earlier:

Ray Gosling