The wages of sin

A few people may be a bit happier tonight. Perhaps, "happier" is not the word, perhaps schadenfreude is the word. Two former Labour MPs, one a minister, have lost their court cases; Phil Woolas, stripped of his seat for electoral hanky panky, and David Chaytor for being a fraud and a thief. Both abused their position as elected representatives. They were members of our ruling elite, and as such owed us a duty of integrity, which they failed to deliver. They are not the only ones.

But frankly, I don't worry too much about how Chaytor and Woolas are feeling tonight.
Does anyone know who Lloyd Turner was? Some people might think that the doings of our political classes do not impact upon others. Well, they do. Lloyd Turner was the Editor of the Daily Star and was responsible for blowing the whistle on Jeffrey Archer. The Daily Star, under Turner's editorship claimed that Archer was seeing a prostitute and also that they had had sex. Archer sued for and, inexplicably won, due in some part to the outrageous directions of the trial judge. The damages amounted to £500,000 and as a result of the loss, Turner was sacked as editor. At the time, nobody knew his life was going to be cut short, but he worked for two other newspapers, both of which folded. The loss of the case was shattering to Lloyd Turner and his wife, Jill:

Lloyd's career never really recovered after he and his newspaper lost their libel case 14 years ago and he was sacked," she says quietly. "Archer bounded out of the High Court, seemingly vindicated. And my husband, who knew all about Archer's lies, his inventions and his womanising, was left a broken man, with his reputation in tatters.

As we now know, the fictional life of Jeffrey Archer unravelled shortly after and he was finally imprisoned for perjury and made to pay back the damages to the Daily Star, and others, such as Private Eye, with full costs. Archer bounced back; Matthew Parris likened him to Mr Toad of Toad Hall, a sort of charming, lovable skalliwag.

Lloyed Turner was beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel by 1996 and was planning to return to Fleet Street, this time, with the Daily Mail when on Thursday, September 12th, 1996, he died of a heart attack, in the arms of his wife.
When the news broke of Archer's prison sentence in July 2001, Jill Turner told a reporter who asked what she would say to Archer if she met him:

I know exactly what Lloyd would say to him if he had the chance: `Gotcha, Archer. Gotcha at last.

Gotcha Woolas. Gotcha Chaytor, Gotcha at last. But I would like to ask them, how many broken careers and shattered lives have you left in your wake?