” I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman...”

A man has been given an asbo banning him from carrying felt tip pens in public after writing abusive comments about women in public lavatories and buses.

I don’t think I have ever seen a more pointless sentence. If he breaches it, he’ll end up in prison. For graffiti.

Magistrates in Sevenoaks, Kent, served Jell with the order on 22 December after hearing that he had committed criminal damage and harassment between January and September 2007.

He seems utterly barking, but basically harmless. There’s no suggestion he touches, or even exposes himself to women.

He does, however, expose them to rude words:

Police said he wrote abusive comments about women he took a dislike to, and also drew the attention of his victims to rude or distressing words or images he wrote on his newspaper as he travelled on the bus.

There was no reason behind him choosing the women he targeted other than that he saw them on a bus he frequently used or that they lived or worked locally, a spokesman said.

So what...?

Sorry to seem callous if you are easily offended, but come on! This man is a harmless freak, who showed women obscene words or drawings on the bus. That’s it. So now the police are involved, and court time has been spent on this, and if he can’t stop (as seems likely), he’ll go to prison.

Ladies, if any of you are reading this: Get. A. Grip! Seriously. And if you can’t, then perhaps the police should:

PC Debs Rudkin, of Kent police, praised the victims for coming forward, saying it would not have been possible to convict Jell without their evidence.

Chief Inspector Russell Nyman said: "The asbo should ensure we do not see a repeat of this type of behaviour. We do take reports of this nature very seriously."

‘Praised the victims for coming forward’...? Oh, good lord!

Whatever happened to ignoring the man, or ridiculing him? Are we so weak and feeble we need to run to the police and have them kiss us and make it better? Is this seriously a good use of their time, and that of the courts?

Unless the police have good reason to believe that this chap is a budding Buffalo Bill in the making (and I wouldn’t take this chap’s word for that, frankly...), then they’d have been better off telling these women to just ignore him.

Over at David Thompson’s site, we can see where such bizarre fixation on feelings and exaggeration of ‘sensitivity’ can lead. Some will read that and say, ‘Only in America!’

I say we aren’t that far behind them..