There’s a story about a court case involving a couple of men charged with assault at Manchester Airport (UK). Now of course, you can’t necessarily be sure you’re getting a fully accurate picture of all the facts and viewpoints, but it is pretty obvious that these guys had let their emotions get the better of them and had assaulted someone and then the police. Moreover, the incident was recorded on CCTV and there were plenty of witnesses.

And yet here they are denying the allegations and claiming self-defence. Do they really believe that of themselves? Ok, something had riled them up, or at least one of them who was clearly the instigator, the other having simply then taken his side. But the instigator had gone out of his way to make the initial assault. Whilst I’m in no position to judge whether or not his getting riled up was itself justified, it is his denial of his taking the actions that he blatantly did that gets to me.

In truth it is not this particular incident that gets to me, it is simply the observation that so many people these days are loudly proclaiming their innocence despite being guilty. Rather than own up, explain what prompted their actions, and apologise, they deny any wrongdoing.

I don’t of course doubt for a moment that it was always so with certain types of people. It’s simply another reminder of the fact that loud protestations of innocence bear very little relationship with whether or not they are innocent. There are those who will swear blind they are innocent irrespective of the fact that they are guilty. Such people are not trying or learning to be a better person and are highly likely to repeat past crimes.