Lest We Forget

Today is Armistice Day, and 93 years since the guns on the Western Front fell silent.



In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

by John McCrae, May 1915

Crime and its causes

I read an interesting letter in this month's magazine of the Magistrates' Association regarding the erosion of those taboos which once ordered society.

The letter, with which I wholly agree, makes the case that it is a lack of discipline and proper punishment that is to blame for much of our present day ills and it cannot be denied that since the end of the last war there as been a fundamental shift in our entire concept of discipline.

Corporal punishment has been abolished in schools, Capital Punishment has gone, parental punishment is bounded by guidelines that if not followed will result in either prosecution for assault or the removal of children from their parents, or both!
Child criminals are viewed as victims and Youth Courts hand out 'last chances' time and time again.
Indeed it is no exaggeration to say that 'punishment' has become a dirty word.

All aspects of our society are required to be 'child friendly' and children grow up without being able to discern right from wrong or to understand how to conduct themselves as responsible citizens, rather they are imbued from an early age with the view that they are entitled, as of right, to do as they will.

Two stark illustrations of this malaise were reported in a local newspaper.

25 year old Adam Smith, in a drunken frenzy, kicked a man almost to death leaving him severely brain damaged, unable to walk or talk.
This violent thug has a history of drunken violence dating back to his school years, including an assault last year when he knocked another man unconscious, for which he was only cautioned. He has never received the punishment he deserved in the past and this is the result.

In similar vain, 39 year old Wayne Moffitt kicked to death a 71 year old man and at the time of the attack Moffitt was subject to a Community Punishment Order for a previous assault, clearly insufficient to deter him from further violent action.

One can only speculate that if their upbringing had taught them right from wrong, upheld and reinforced by their teachers, and if the punishment for their earlier misdeeds had been more onerous, might they have learned how better to behave?

An Inept Lot

With staggering ineptitude, just days before Remembrance Sunday, the Organising Committee for the London Olympics issues thousands of posters showing the river Thames with the Second World War cruiser, Belfast, see left, ‘air-brushed’ out.

One can only wonder at the mindset of these people, their disregard of history and the sacrifice made by such as served on Belfast so that London would be free to hold an Olympics.

Of course it was all a ‘terrible mistake’ says an unidentified spokesman – no it wasn’t! It takes time, skill and effort to digitally alter a photograph; it’s not something that can be done by accident.

Shame on the lot of them!

Remember Remember the 5th of November

Today is Bonfire Night, or Guy Fawkes Night if you prefer, not that poor Guy was actually consigned to a Bonfire, he was hung drawn and quartered and the original effigy burnt was that of the Pope!



But never mind that small historical inaccuracy, let's celebrate this great English tradition while we can, before the 'elfs get their hands on it as they've done with conkers and much else besides.

While I'm on the subject I can't help recalling the old adage that Guy Fawkes was
"the only man ever to enter Parliament with honest intentions".

However you view him and his actions, have a happy and safe Bonfire Night.

Golliwogs, Delays and the CPS

It’s not for me to comment as to whether the placing, last October, of a golliwog in Mrs Jenna Mason’s window constituted behavior likely to cause racially-aggravated harassment but what does concern me, yet again, is the shear ineptitude of the Crown Prosecution Service.

Mrs Mason was charged by the police, on the advice of the CPS, on the 2nd September and on the 7th of September a police spokeswoman said: "We have had a complaint from a member of the public, we have investigated it and both the Crown Prosecution Service and ourselves have agreed there is enough to prosecute."

Yesterday, at Lowestoft Magistrates' Court, Chris McCann, head of the complex casework unit at the East of England Crown Prosecution Service, offered no evidence in a hearing lasting less than five minutes when he is reported to have told the Court that “a review has been carried out at the highest level” and that there was not “a realistic prospect of conviction”.

Now if that is the case what has changed, what further evidence has come to light to alter the view held by the CPS on the 2nd of September?

I suspect that nothing has changed and the CPS has belatedly done what it should have done much sooner and not waited until the day of trial, in the hope that Mrs Mason would plead guilty, to drop an unwinable case.

Love Barnsley

The Daily Mail (well I suppose it would have to be) has taken exception to a District Judge at Barnsley objecting to defendants calling court staff ‘love’.

http//www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2051798/Judge-accused-discrimination-ban-Yorkshire-defendants-calling-court-staff-love.html

Now I’m a Yorkshireman born and bred but I too have, on various occasions, instructed those before the court not to call the court clerk ‘love’, an almost automatic reaction in my part of the world.

Well that must make me also guilty of discrimination against traditional Yorkshire dialect if Graeme Garvey of the Yorkshire Dialect Society is to be believed. I prefer to think of it as an expression of good manners not to use a familiarity to those you don’t know, especially one with overt sexist overtones.

The Art of Sentencing

Last week I sentenced my first case of ABH (assault occasioning actual bodily harm) under the new sentencing guidelines.
Generally speaking, the new guidelines have down-graded assault cases, especially the most frequent, that of common assault, but for ABH the sentences have been substantially increased.

The starting point for the case I was involved with, a single unprovoked head-but causing no lasting damage, is 26 weeks imprisonment.

In the retirement room a strange dichotomy emerged; while generally we, on our bench, have bemoaned the down-grading of common assault cases, having to impose community penalties where previously we would have been considering jail, we also, on this occasion, were reluctant to send the perpetrator of the ABH to prison.

But we can’t have it both ways. If we are to follow the guidelines, and the law says we must unless we have good reasons not to and that it would be unjust to do so, we have to follow the intentions of the Sentencing Council which are clearly to increase sentences for the most serious assaults, including ABH, and to reduce those for the more minor cases.

In the event, we gave the defendant every mitigation - first offence, discount for a guilty plea, and that any prison sentence should be as short as possible but we still sent him to jail for 10 weeks. In many ways it was a compromise decision, but that’s often the case and it was a sentence we all could live with. I understand he intends to appeal the sentence and it will be interesting to see what the Crown Court has to say about it.