Saturday 6 August 2011

Maybe She Could Work For The RNLI…

…as an anchor:
Hayley Wilkins, 48, plundered more than £13,000 from cash-strapped Patchway Labour Club in Bristol - her third conviction for stealing from employers.
You have to wonder just what employers 2 and 3 were thinking when they hired her…
She was given a suspended 12-month prison sentence and ordered to carry out 240 hours of unpaid work in a British Heart Foundation charity shop.
As a ‘warning’ example..?!?
But she told a judge at Bristol Crown Court that she cannot work standing up after she suffered a prolapsed disc following a fall three years ago.

The Probation Service has been unable to find her any work sitting down, and her case has now been adjourned to see if an alternative punishment can be found.
*sigh* The community service IS the 'alternative' isn't it? An alternative to jail...

And that’s not the only liberty she’s taking with the justice system.
Wilkins claimed she was working from home as a bookkeeper and was compensating the club at £100 a month.

But that figure was disputed by club chairman Andrew Wheeler, who said the club had only received £30 from her in total. Judge Ticehurst adjourned the case again until September 13.

He told Wilkins to provide him with a record of her claimed compensation payments to magistrates and a full inventory of her assets.

He said: 'If the magistrates say "we have only received £30" I may need to be unsympathetic with you.'
Ooooh, steady! Don’t go all ‘Judge Dredd’ there, will you?
Jo Atherton, defending, said her client's daughter and new husband would lose their council home if she was sent to prison.
Gosh, it’s amazing how little I can bring myself to care about that…

8 comments:

Mr Eugenides said...

Now, now. Remember the ancient proverb: he who steals from a thief will receive a thousand pardons...

Macheath said...

From the Mail article:

'...she had changed the name of the payee on some of the cheques from SWEB, the energy company, to SWEBB, the first initial and surname of her son Samuel Webb.'

Imaginative, no? Although maybe he changed his name on purpose:

'...14 cheques were deposited by Wilkins, most into the bank account of her son Samuel Webb and others into the account of her son Billy Powell.'

Perhaps the court should be asking for a full inventory of their assets too...

Captain Haddock said...

Please Julia, not the RNLI ..

One of the remaining few, genuinely independent charities left in the UK ..

Send her to work for the increasingly Stasi-like RSPCA .. they deserve one another ..

Gnostic said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lynne said...

Ain't it strange the way all these poor little criminals are really hard done by victims of society undeserving of suitable punishment?

If she can't do the sentence she's been handed down then lock the bitch up. If what she's good at is sitting down then let it be the cold, hard concrete floor of a cell. Simples.

KenS said...

It does seem strange to sentence someone with a track record of stealing from her employer to work in a shop - er.... they have tills in shops, and readily accessible stuff on the shelves.

Not exactly joined up thinking.

WV - affar - where they should send her.

Twenty_Rothmans said...

Stealing from Labour?

The irony is beautiful to behold.

JuliaM said...

"Now, now. Remember the ancient proverb: he who steals from a thief will receive a thousand pardons..."

Heh! ;)

"Imaginative, no? Although maybe he changed his name on purpose..."

They don't look like they possess that amount of cunning.

" If what she's good at is sitting down then let it be the cold, hard concrete floor of a cell. Simples."

Indeed!