Post Holiday Rant

Back from a very wet and not altogether enjoyable holiday in France I’m in the mood for a good rant, and perusing the newspapers on my return gives me plenty to rant about.

Top of my list is the report of a gentleman acquitted of assaulting a teenage yob who was terrorising his 92 and 84 year old neighbours.

The bit that disturbs me is when told the police would be called the 14 year old yob is reported to have yelled “What are the ****** police going to do?”
To which the answer is likely to be ‘nothing at all’, despite the Devon & Cornwall force being swift to act in arresting and detaining in custody the Good Samaritan neighbour.
And what have the Devon & Cornwall police to say in answer to this criticism – they had no-one available for comment!
Shame on you Devon & Cornwall police, you’d have someone ‘available for comment’ quick enough if your actions reflected better on you.

On the subject of teenage yobs, it has been reported that the 11 year old convicted for his part in the recent riots, and who was handed into police by his mother had, just three weeks earlier used a knife to slash the seats of a bus before setting the stuffing on fire, smashing a window and leaping out of the bus to escape.
Convicted of arson, criminal damage and carrying a bladed instrument he was given a 10 month Referral Order and for his part in the riots an eighteen month Supervision Order.
Remember we are not talking about a hardened adult criminal; this boy is 11 years old. It is said that his father is a convicted criminal and the boy, being beyond parental control, is now in the care of the Local Authority, but what future does he have but the prospect of more and more community punishments, then Youth Custody and ultimately prison?

Without attaching any blame to the mother in the above case, who clearly does not want to see her child go down the same road as his father, a survey of grandparents commissioned by the Mature Times magazine reveals that they consider the bad behaviour of children to be a result of poor parenting and the failure of parents both to set clear behavioural standards and to discipline their children.
As a statement of the b****ing obvious this takes some beating.

My final rant is reserved for Nigel Burke, writing in today’s Daily Express and arguing for a repeal of the ban on hunting with hounds.
He states the case of Tony Wright who, in 2007 won his appeal against conviction for illegal hunting the previous year. Mr Burke says that following the successful appeal the Crown Prosecution Service attempted to get Mr Wright re-convicted and when that failed they took his case to Judicial Review. This is a gross distortion of the facts!

The case of Tony Wright threw up a number of anomalies with the Act and for the clarity of future prosecutions, either private ones by the League Against Cruel Sports, as in the Banks case, or by the police/CPS, the CPS quite rightly asked the High Court to rule as to where the burden of proof in such cases lay, with the defence to prove they were acting legally, or with the prosecution to prove the opposite.
There was never any intention to re-convict Tony Banks, Nigel Burke is obviously unaware of the law on double jeopardy, and such an action would have been impossible.

This article, in a respected newspaper, illustrates the dangers of those with a little knowledge commenting on things they know nothing about using terms they don’t understand.

Rant for today over, normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.