The Sentencing Guidelines

I read a couple of newspaper reports over the weekend bemoaning the low level of fines imposed on parents who fail to ensure their children attend school on a regular basis.
The reports cited recent cases where fines had amounted to less than 16p per day of missed school.

read here

I don't disagree that such fines are pitifully low, but they are not unique in that regard.

The level of fines for all offences are set by the Government's Sentencing Council whose 'Sentencing Guidelines' stipulate that fines are to be set as a proportion of income, and that such fines are automatically reduced by one third in the event of a guilty plea.

These 'guidelines' further stipulate that anyone on State Benefit has an income of £100 per week, no matter how much benefit they actually receive. So a fine set at Level A, ie 50% of income, comes out at £50, less one third off for a guilty plea which means just £33 to pay!

For the record, the Sentencing Council has 15 members - 7 judges, the Director of Public Prosecutions, one law professor, the CEO of Citizens Advice, the Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, a defence solicitor, a chief probation officer, a District Judge and, despite the Magistrates' Courts handling 92% of all criminal cases, just one Justice of the Peace!

And their much vaunted 'guidelines'?

Guidelines are, or should be, "for the guidance of wise men and the blind obedience of fools", a quotation attributed to Douglas Bader, but in the case of the Sentencing Council, their 'guidelines' must be followed. In this regard they are not guidelines at all, they are inflexible sentencing rules set by a goverment appointed body.

Their 'sentencing guidelines' are nothing more that sentencing by a complicated, abstract formula, denying to courts any real discretion or the application of local knowledge and common sense. It is a 'one size fits all' approach, and as such results in such travesties as the '16p a day' cases mentioned above.

It ill-becomes the Government’s Behaviour 'Tsar', Charlie Taylor, to criticise his employer's policy on sentencing, and those like Margaret Whellans, Strategic Director for Learning and Children at Gateshead Council, Nick Seaton of the Campaign for Real Education and miscellaneous newspaper reporters would be better advised to take their concerns to their MP for it is those who have shackled the courts to these ever-growing, constantly revised and universally disliked 'sentencing guidelines', rather than criticising magistrates whose discretion to sentence fairly and properly has been removed by this and past governments.

Freemen On The Land

There was an interesting article in the February issue of ‘Benchmark’ concerning a movement calling themselves ‘Freemen On The Land’ which, it would seem, originated in the USA (where else?) in the 1970s and came to prominence in the UK some time in 2008.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Freeman_on_the_land

Freemen on the land believe they can declare themselves independent of government jurisdiction on the grounds that all statute law is contractual, and only applicable if an individual consents to be governed by it. They believe the only "true" law is their own somewhat bizarre version of common law.
They maintain that individuals can choose to ‘opt out’ of statutory law using the concept of "lawful rebellion".

They further believe that everyone has two strands to their existence: their flesh and blood body, and their legal person, represented by their birth certificate. What they term ‘The Strawman’ is created when a birth certificate is filed, and is the entity which is subject to statutory law. Their physical self is referred to by a slightly different name, rather than John Smith it would be "John of the family Smith", and it is this persona which is the ‘Freeman’ and that this change of name entitles them to deny the jurisdiction of the courts, and so escape sanction.

However, where these contentions, being based largely on wishful thinking, have been tested in court, those proponents of the movement have met with little sympathy and no success to date.

Gavin Kaylhem, of Grimsby, received a 30-day sentence for willfully refusing to pay his council tax. He had claimed he had no contractual obligation to pay under Common Law because he was a “freeman”.

http://www.thisisgrimsby.co.uk/Freeman-refused-pay-council/story-14114588-detail/story.html

Norfolk odd-job man Mark Bond, AKA ‘Mark of the Family Bond’, was arrested for non-payment of council tax in 2010

http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/news/norfolk_tax_dodger_arrested_after_writing_to_queen_1_745681

Despite handing police a notice of intent stating that he was no longer a UK citizen, and his pseudo-legal wrangling, he was handed a suspended three-month jail sentence on condition that he pay £20 a week off the debt.

It’s not just the UK either, in Ireland Bobby Oliver Sludds or Bobby of the family Sludds as he referred to himself, failed to escape a series of motoring fines and convictions for driving without insurance last September.

http://www.wexfordpeople.ie/news/bobby-of-the-family-sludds-may-be-jailed-2878029.html

The movement has its own website and forum

http://www.fmotl.com/

which advises people how to oppose such things as Council Tax demands and fixed penalty notices, and suggests that by following the tenants of the Freedom on the Land movement you will be successful, which is not only self-delusional but encourages people to oppose the law and the jurisdiction of the courts.
Despite what these people, including David Icke (yes it's him again) might think, changing your name is not a legal loophole entitling you to opt-out of what they call ‘The Grand Deception’ and give you freedom from what they consider to be police intimidation and harassment, the law courts and ‘those official-looking brown envelopes’!

I look forward to having one of these ‘freemen’ in court; it should prove an interesting diversion.

Councillor Florence Anderson

Councillor Florence Anderson, a past deputy leader and a member of Sunderland Council's Community and Safer City Scrutiny Committee has been suspended by her local Labour party for the comments she has made on a Facebook site.

It is said that she is a member of the Facebook Group "Margaret Thatcher doesn’t have to be dead before we give her a funeral"and the web site “I’ll dance on Thatcher’s grave, even if she's buried at sea”.

It is alleged that she has 'liked' a Facebook comment that the IRA should blow up the next Tory conference and that she has previously said that she hopes Margaret Thatcher would "burn in hell"!

Despicable though these comments are, this woman is not without her supporters, Dave Hopper, general secretary of the Durham Miners Association, has said "there wouldn’t be much sympathy if things like that did happen" ...... "certainly there will be a lot of people who will be very, very pleased to see the demise of people like Thatcher"and "I’ll not be shedding any tears for the demise of any Tories."

Given that the IRA killed about 500 British soldiers I doubt the good people of Sunderland and esewhere who lost loved ones to this evil organisation will be particularly enamoured with her remarks, and my personal disgust knows no bounds.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the last Conservative goverment, and Lady Thatcher herself, she is a human being and deserves the same respect we all do, gloating at or wishing for another's death is the action of the lowest of the low, people without a shred of human decency.

Cllr Anderson is, however, completely without remorse saying "I stand by what I said".

In this she, and those like Dave Hopper, demonstrate the intolerance and hatred of the hard left who lecture everyone else on tolerance and diversity but in truth are nothing more than increasingly hate filled hypocrites.

Knife Crime

I came across this web site yesterday

http://www.knifecrimes.org/

and was quite disturbed to read that West Yorkshire had, in 2007/08, the forth worst incidents of knife crime in the UK after the mass urban conurbations of Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and the London Metropolitan Police Area.

Following the Court of Appeal's decision in R vs Povey, McGeary, Pownall and Bleazard [2008], generally known as 'Povey', the lowest level of knife crime ie possession of a bladed instrument, not in dangerous circumstances and not used to threaten or cause fear, should result in a 12 week prison sentence for a first-time offender who has pleaded guilty.
Any more serious case should be sent to the Crown Court for sentence.

Magistrates, if they will only apply this Court of Appeal guidance, have a crucial role to play in sending out a clear message that simply to carry a knife, which always has with it the danger that it will be used, however inadvertently, will result in a prison sentence.

One Year Old

I've just noticed that this blog is now one year old - Happy Birthday blog!

When I first conceived the idea for a blog I anticipated it would deal primarily with the 'interesting' cases that I dealt with in court. However, I've come to realise that, for the most part, the cases we get to deal with aren't that interesting to the general public and above all I wanted the blog to be both interesting and challenging.

It seems now, from reading the postings over the last 12 months, that I've tended to concentrate on 'other people's cases' and those things, not necessarily legal, that I see as being unjust, unfair or downright perverse.

The blog has become, in a way, my rant at those aspects of society which appear to be at odds with what I perceive to be 'fair'.

Umm!

Not what I originally intended at all, I sound like the quintessentially grumpy old man!
So will I continue in like manner? Almost certainly, that is until I sit on an 'interesting' case, which is also capable of sufficient amendment to conceal its true identity without destroying its worth as a blog posting, something which I've found easier said than done.

Sean Penn and the Falkland Islands

What is it with the rabid anti-British Americans like Sean Penn who in their rush to condemn anything British choose to blind themselves to the truth?
In a speech in Uruguay he condemns British ‘colonialism’ with regard to the Falklands Islands, calling Britain a ‘colonial dinosaur’.
Now that’s a bit rich, and typical of American hypocrisy, when the greatest colonial power in the world today is, not Britain but the United States of America!

Consider a list of the current American ‘colonies’, although they don’t of course call them that, because America decries colonialism doesn’t it? No, the American colonies are face-savingly referred to as ‘unincorporated territories’, here are just a few of them:

Baker Island
Jarvis Island
Howland Island
Kingman Reef
Johnston Atoll.
Navassa Island
Midway Atoll
the Serranilla Bank
the Bajo Nuevo Bank.
Puerto Rico,
Guam,
American Samoa
Wake Island
The Panama Canal Zone
The Virgin Islands and the
Northern Mariana Islands

The Americans even have an official philosophy to excuse their rampant colonialism, it’s called American Exceptionalism and refers to the theory that the United States is superior to, and occupies a special niche, among the nations of the world and so is excused from acting as other nations and is both above and an exception to the law, specifically the Law of Nations.

Let us further explore American hypocrisy.

In 1942 an island group, lets call it Hawaii, thousands of miles from America, but to which the USA claimed ownership by right of conquest (isn’t that colonialism?) and with no indigenous American populace, was attacked by a country under the control of a military dictatorship.
America responded with a full declaration of war against this military-led country and atom bombed two of it’s cities to destruction.

In 1982 a group of islands thousand of miles from Britain, with a 100% indigenous British population, were attacked and occupied by a country under the control of a military dictatorship. Britain responded with a limited engagement to secure the removal of the invading force, with the full approval of the United Nations, and refrained from following America’s object lesson in 1945 and slaughtering hundreds of thousands innocent civilians.

Sound familiar? It should as this was the Falkland Islands conflict to which Americans like Sean Penn so hypocritically refer to as an example of British colonialism.

I wonder is it jealousy that fuels this naked hatred of anything British amongst a certain type of American?

Whatever the root cause of American hypocrisy and anti-British sentiment, (surely by now they’ve forgiven us for burning the White House in 1812), the stupidity of Sean Penn and his acolytes can only fuel an expectation amongst Latin American countries, and Argentina in particular, that America is ‘on their side’ and does not support it’s only real ally, the only one it can rely on to send troops and add support during conflicts such as Iraq and Afghanistan (not many Uruguayans and Argentineans fighting alongside US Marines in Helmund Province).

Let us not forget a couple of other facts which the USA chooses to disregard:
America and the United Nations Charter are committed to the right of any people to self-determination, that is, the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no external compulsion or external interference. Indeed, it is the very cornerstone of the United States Declaration of Independence.



The people of the Falkland Islands are indigenously British and have expressed, time without number, their wish to remain sovereignly and politically British. Would America deny them that right they claimed for themselves in 1776?
Ah yes of course it would, American Exceptionalism at work again, although one might consider it more American Hypocrisy!

One last word, this country, Argentina, that Sean Penn so enthusiastically supports is the same one which in 1945 provided a safe haven for numerous Nazis fleeing the consequences of their barbarity and which currently, almost solely amongst nations, is assisting Iran with the development of its nuclear program in order that it can build an atom bomb so the lunatic in charge, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can fulfil his pledge to use it to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth.

Sounds like just the sort of ‘friend’ America deserves.

The Driving Test

I read a disturbing report in this weekend’s newspapers that some 300 drivers a week take their driving test with the aid of an interpreter, and that the written test is taken in their own language, which is now available translated into 19 different versions.

This means that a large number of drivers are free to drive unable to understand basic road signs and written road-side directions, let alone the instructions and advice contained in their car’s handbook.

This cannot be good for road safety, nor on the ability of these non-English speakers to understand, and thus comply, with the road traffic laws and regulations.

I have seen an increasing number of drivers in court charged with driving without insurance due to their failure to understand the conditions of their policy, or them being unable to understand, and thus respond, to a section 172 notice requiring them to identify the driver after a speed camera violation.

The above must reinforce the widely held view that immigrants should, as a matter of course, be reasonably fluent in English as a pre-condition of obtaining a resident permit or British nationality. .

IT The Courts and the CPS

I understand from a recent meeting with the CPS that they intend, as soon as possible, to move towards a completely digital system.

The Attorney General in a talk to Sussex University's 'Issues in Criminal Law' group on 'The Criminal Justice System: meeting the challenge' (9 February 2011) said:

“We must move to a digital CJS as soon as possible” and that “Moving to electronic caseworking and using the electronic case file will significantly reduce CPS's reliance and dependency on paper and support more flexible and mobile ways of working. In addition, we would also like to see electronic case files introduced as early as possible, so that case material can quickly be moved between the defence, police, CPS and the courts, improving efficiency and saving money in all these agencies”.

I understand that the proposals include the CPS receiving case files from the police, passing advance disclosure to defence solicitors, and information to the probation service and courts electronically, and CPS advocates using laptops in court to present their case.

It is also suggested that benches may be issued with tablet computers so they can access such things as records of past offending, crime scene photographs and medical and other reports electronically rather than ‘on paper’ as at present.

I’ve no problem with the idea in principle, in fact now the Lord Chancellor has given it the green light I’ve been thinking of getting a tablet and downloading the Sentencing Guidelines onto it, you can even get an ‘app’ for it! Much easier than carting that huge book about.

However, two things do concern me over this proposal, the first being the Government’s repeated failures to deliver any IT project that works on time and within budget.

The list of Government IT failures is legion and include:

A pay system for the Royal Navy that was a complete failure - it was 217 per cent over budget and abandoned after just one year at a cost of £8.7 million.

The NHS IT programme, four years late and costing £20bn more than the original budget, with 110 breakdowns in four months.

The Magistrates Courts own system, Libra, costing £557m instead of £146m, with the main supplier twice threatening to withdraw unless it was paid more money.

The National Insurance Recording System which crashed soon after its introduction in 1999 with 1500 unresolved system problems.

The Air Traffic Control system was six years late and cost £623m, almost double the original estimate.

The Benefits Payment Card project which was scrapped after 3 years at an estimated cost of £1 billion.

The police computer system, Impact, was delayed for three years and the cost increased from £164m to £367m.

And let’s not forget the last CPS debacle with IT when its much vaunted case tracking computer system was scrapped after spending £9.6 million.

There have been other notable failures including eight Home Office IT projects that are either "severely delayed" or "severely over budget", according to the National Audit Office and problems with systems for the Passport Agency, Immigration, tax self-assessment, the Post Office, National Insurance and the Prison Service.

If that’s not depressing enough then consider the problem of security.

Recently it’s been revealed that supposedly ultra-secure telephone conversations between Scotland Yard and the FBI have been ‘hacked’

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16875921

and that more than 1000 Government laptops have, in recent years, been ‘lost’ or stolen.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1580767/More-than-1000-Government-laptops-lost.html

In America, Government departments that have been ‘hacked’ into include the Pentagon, the US Senate, the FBI, the CIA and NASA.

It’s not just the USA either, last year the Canadian Government was targeted by Chinese hackers who gained access to "highly classified federal information".

I’m no IT expert but it does seem to me that if such (supposedly) ultra-secure organisations as the FBI and the CIA can be ‘hacked’ then the amateurs at the CPS should be easy picking for some 18 year old nerd with a laptop and too much time on his hands.

And the prospect of a CPS laptop, containing confidential information on offenders, crimes, evidence etc ‘going missing’, especially pre-trial, just doesn’t bear thinking about.

Why Not Treason?

I couldn’t agree more with the Home Secretary, Theresa May, that the place for terrorists is in a prison cell and the place for foreign terrorists, such as the Muslim hate cleric Abu Qatada is a foreign prison cell.

The ruling of the European Court of Human Rights, which prevented the UK deporting this man, described by the Home Office as ‘dangerous’ and ‘a real threat to our security’ because he might not get a fair trial in his native Jordan, where he is wanted for terrorist activities, is truly perverse.

The European Convention on Human Rights was never intended to apply to those countries, such as Jordan, who were not signatories to the convention, it’s not called the European Convention by accident, and to extend its provisions to any country anywhere in the world is a gross distortion of the intentions of the original architects of the convention.

see

http://amiducour.blogspot.com/2011/03/human-rights-and-that-act.html

On a separate matter, why aren’t those preachers of hate and violence who hold a British passport indicted for treason?

“If a man do levy war against our lord the King in his realm, or be adherent to the King’s enemies in his realm, giving to them aid and comfort in the realm, or elsewhere" he shall be guilty of High Treason.

Given that the mujahideen and al-Qaeda are self-admitted enemies of the United Kingdom, in the UK and elsewhere, and that these hate preachers consistently give them aid and support, it seems to me that there is a case of High Treason for them to answer.

If not High Treason what about Misprision of Treason?

It's little used but by statute, the offence of Misprision of Treason under the Common Law of England is still on the statute books and carrys life imprisonment on conviction. The crime is committed where a person knows that treason is being planned or committed and does not report it as soon as he can to a justice of the peace or other authority. The offender does not need to consent to the treason; mere knowledge is enough.

Come on Police, CPS et al, do what any right thinking person would do and put these preachers of hate, bigotory and violence behind bars, for the rest of their lives.

Police Attack on Pensioner's Car

I was appalled by this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6RyXzLbfBc

which shows two policemen carrying out a vicious attack on the car of Mr Robert Whatley for the, in their eyes it would seem, the heinous crime of failing to wear a seat belt!

While the attack shows the unacceptable face of policing in Britain today what is even more disturbing is the Gwent Police, who investigated the incident, found the policemen involved had not been guilty of any wrongdoing.

Let's be clear about this - the Gwent Police believe that it is perfectly acceptable police procedure for two officers to attack the car of a 73 year old with boots and batons, so severely that they cause £9800 worth of damage, for nothing more than a minor traffic infringement.

They were so convinced of the rightness of their cause that they dare not face Mr Whatley in court but instead settled out of court for £20 000 plus costs and repairs to his car, thought in total to amount to £100 000.

Cowards as well as bullies then ?

You decide.

What I do know is that the police will never regain or keep the trust of the British public while they behave like third world tyrants, and that is the real tragedy of this and other like actions.

To Spank Or Not To Spank

I read recently that the labour MP for Tottenham, Mr David Lammy, has said parents were “no longer sovereign in their own homes” and lived under constant fear that social workers would take away their children if they chastised them, and that this inability by parents to discipline their children, by smacking if necessary, was at the root of last summer’s inner city riots, rather than being caused by Government cuts or joblessness.

Needless to say, the liberal left, and its mouthpiece The Guardian, are jumping up and down in rage at the concept of a parent actually trying to instil discipline in their children, and spanking them if they fail to respond.

Their cry is that ‘Children have rights’ and that parents should reason with their children rather than punish them.

Have you ever tried to reason with a 10 year old? I’m sorry but pre-teenage children can’t be reasoned with, it’s not their fault but their brains are simply not sufficiently developed at that age to understand and accept the concept of reasoned argument, and by the time they are, in their mid-teens, it’s too late. The damage of a failure to instil discipline and acceptable boundaries at an early age has been done, and can’t be un-done.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve sat in court and listened to the distraught parent of a delinquent teenager say that their child takes no notice of what they say and just ‘does their own thing’, be that refusing to go to school, staying out late, taking drugs etc. I’m tempted, but refrain, from asking the parents what disciplinary measures they took, and what values they instilled in their children when they were young enough to be controlled.

It’s no co-incidence that the whole issue surrounding discipline within the family is anathema to the trendy liberal left. Their view has long been that discipline is repressive and their focus on banning smacking is simply a means to prevent the imposition of any parental discipline and thus to undermine all parental authority, and replace it with that of the state.

The ultimate ambition of the left is the imposition of a totalitarian state, the greatest threat to which is the cohesive family unit, break that down and the move to a totalitarian state becomes not just easier, but virtually inevitable.

One needs look no further than the twin youth organisations in pre-World War Two Germany, the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls, where the concept of parental discipline was subsumed by loyalty and obedience to the state based on the Jesuit motto ‘Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man’.

If one wants a fictional, but chilling, exposition of the consequences of such a philosophy then read ‘This Perfect Day’, by Ira Levin, where the whole concept of family is supplanted by the state as family, ‘One Mighty Family’ being the state’s anthem.

So where does that leave us on the smacking controversy?

In my view, smacking a child is an action of last resort and represents a failure by a parent, by schools and by society as a whole, to instil in the child, from the cradle, a set of values, of boundaries and of parental and social discipline. If that is carried through rather than children being allowed to set their own code of behaviour, a 1960’s mantra of the liberal left, then smacking will rarely, if ever, become necessary.

However, where a parent does resort to spanking their child then they should be free of the fear that social workers will take away their children and be, as David Lammy has it, “sovereign in their own homes”. The cohesive family unit, free of state interference, is our greatest protection against totalitarianism.

Foreign Aid

I read that we are giving India £280 million in ‘aid’ this year, and that, to quote Tory MP Patrick Mercer “Such aid is not given willy-nilly. The expectation is that it will generate better conditions for the country......and help expand trade”

Yeah right!

But that expansion of trade does not seem to include India buying our Eurofighter jet as they now look set to spend £7 billion buying a French jet fighter instead, the Dassaut Rafale

As an aside, if India can afford to spend £7 billion on jet fighters why on earth do they need our £280 million? It’s time this whole question of ‘aid’ was looked at more realistically so that aid is directed at those countries least able to help themselves, not those with £7 billion in their back pockets to spend on military hardware rather than on the advancement of its people.

I’m reminded of a quotation by Dwight D. Eisenhower, no stranger to such things:

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

Fred Goodwin

So Fred (The Shred) Goodwin has been stripped of his Knighthood for his part in the RBS banking failure.

While Fred may have been guilty of poor judgement no-one lost money as a result of the bank’s collapse and he has never been convicted of any criminal activity associated with the bank’s failure. He’s not quite in the same league as the traitors and tyrants to whom the same censure has been applied in the past.

Smells to me like nothing more than petty jealousy with a strong hint of the vigilante about it.