I enjoyed reading Michael White’s piece in this morning’s Guardian about the furore over the fate of Learco Chindamo, who may soon be released from prison after being convicted, aged 15, of the murder of schoolteacher Philip Lawrence.

A kneejerk reaction from certain quarters has been a call to repeal the Human Rights Act. It’s indicative of people’s seeming desire to take tabloid newspaper reports at face value, since it was they, and not the judgement of the asylum and immigration tribunal, which attributed the decision to allow him to stay in the UK to the Act. In fact, it was neither the HRA nor the European Convention on Human Rights, which the HRA allows to be enacted through British courts rather than taking a substantially more expensive route via Strasbourg.

But since when have little things like factual accuracy bothered the tabloids, and the politicians who crave their audience?