Anne Brown, for the defence, said Moss was ‘overwhelmed by feelings of enormous shame’.Hmm, I'll take that with a large pinch of salt...
Any needless death is one too many. Put like that, it's hard to disagree. But then we might as well cut the speed limit to 2mph or ban cars altogether. In fact, let's all live in padded rooms, be fed by drips and never venture outside the house.Don’t joke about such things!
But our lives, though longer, would also be ghastly. We'd be tempted to slit our wrists if only we could find something sharp enough.Indeed. It’s like the old joke about the man who gives up all pleasures – he doesn’t really live for ever, it just feels like he does…
Of course it would be lovely if no-one died at all. But at what cost? If we were to cut the drink-drive limit as Sir Peter suggests, and keep the current sanctions, we would have some of the toughest laws in Europe even though our roads are among the safest.But unfortunately, that’s quite likely to be the case, with the NuPuritans in charge…
By all means test drivers coming out of pub car parks. Or follow the example of New York, which is fitting ignition locks into the cars of convicted drunk drivers – the car won't start until the driver has blown into the tube and proved he is sober. What the Government shouldn't do is make the lives of the rest of us more miserable.Well, yes. Unfortunately, the government hasn’t learned yet that that’s what it invariably ends up doing.
I put this argument about not cutting the drink-drive limit to a senior Labour politician the other day. She looked horrified. How could you oppose a move that saved lives? It was the same logic that led her Government to pass the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act. Just look at the name and see how crazy you must be to think safeguarding the vulnerable was a bad idea. In fact it was one of the worst ideas to have come out of the last Government.We must do it for the children! Even if, by doing it, we all get treated like children.
This is the law that treats warm-hearted adults as potential criminals. You can't now help the teacher on your child's school trip or listen to other children read in the classroom without being vetted first. Remember the wild-eyed feminists in the 1970s who proclaimed that all men were rapists? Now we have legislation based on the idea that all adults are paedophiles.The lunatics did take over the asylum after all. Not democratically, either. No-one voted for them.
It's not just insulting to adults; it's also dreadful for children. Not only will their fun be curtailed, as many fewer grown-ups will now be prepared to put themselves forward for football coaching, school trips or Scouting. They are also being led to believe that adults can't be trusted and have less-than-generous motives.Undoubtedly, that’s a valuable lesson. Some adults do indeed fit that profile. The Righteous, for a start…
… what a shame if the very people who are needed to make the Big Society work are deterred from helping out.And yet, iDave doesn’t seem to have grasped that nettle, does he, Mary?
There are few improvements to our lives a Government can make that don't cost money. Here are just a couple. Don't follow Sir Peter North's advice on drink-driving, and repeal the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act. While you're about it, change the law to make it harder for people to sue public bodies after accident or injury. Then, perhaps, public swimming pools will dare to reinstate diving boards and allow parents to bring more than one child for a recreational swim. And adventure holidays will allow youngsters to have proper adventures.All sound changes.
David Cameron talks about wanting people to take more responsibility. That must surely entail allowing them to choose what risks they want to run. If a mother is confident that she can cope with two or three children in the pool, that should be her decision, not the local council's. If a school is happy to trust its parents to help out in the classroom, it should not be prosecuted for not checking their criminal records first.Yes!
Both parties in the coalition say they care about personal freedom. In that case, they should resist any extra encroachment on the way we lead our lives – such as raising the drink-drive limit – and peel away some of the bossier layers of legislation bequeathed by Labour.
To ministers faced with the horrendous task of finding 40 per cent cuts in spending in their departments, this may seem like an unwelcome distraction. Who has the time or energy to start worrying about repealing laws and regulations when there is a spending round to prepare for?I can’t think of anything I’d rather see happen.
Well, it's precisely because of the cuts that this exercise needs to be done. The coalition can't only deliver bad news. It needs to find the odd good story with which to cheer us up. These additions to our freedom are not only cost-free – they also have the chance to make our lives, grim enough at the moment, just a little bit better.
Granted, Naomi Campbell is not very nice or clever. But I really don't see why the beautiful, sullen, 'dotish' airhead becomes the empty vessel into which the world tosses its scorn.Because she’s the one who first received the loot, perhaps, Yaz? Though as David Duff points out, it was with no obvious intentions of keeping it for herself...
It has nothing to do with her race – Campbell will always be the dahling of fashionistas to whom her colour has never mattered.Because only fashionistas are so sophisticated that race is irrelevant, I guess?
OK, so she wasn't the cool, stylish dame last week that she usually is.I have to say, of all the available adjectives, ‘cool’ isn’t one I’d ever ascribe to the notoriously fly-off-the-handle-at every-opportunity clotheshorse…
Of course, it is an inconvenience for one to whom the meaning of life is make-up, frocks, jewels, cameras, Mammon, smitten men and fawning fans.Well, of course…
I am not being facetious. She had to be ordered to The Hague to give evidence at the war crimes trial of Liberia's toppled leader Charles Taylor, who stands accused of sponsoring savage rebellions in the region. So, she doesn't know where Liberia is and couldn't care less about his misdemeanours and all that boring stuff. What do you expect? She is who she is – a supermodel, as it says on the tin.‘We’ don’t expect much else, Yaz, to be truthful…
It is not Campbell that is truly appalling, but the chorus of disapproval we have heard this week from people who showed no interest in the trial until a dumb beauty turned up to entertain them.Ahhhh, right. It’s not the fact that an airhead has been shown to be an airhead that upsets Yaz; it’s that we’ve paid attention to it.
That is racism – treating massacres in Africa as "natural" or inevitable./facepalm
The media got excited and took their cameras to the courtroom. At least millions now will have heard of The Hague, learnt a few facts about a Liberian warlord, an African-American, like most of the elite in that West African country, created through colonising land on behalf of freed slaves.Yes, because native-born Africans can’t organise their own massacres, eh, Yaz?
When he was elected to run Liberia in 1997, the warlord Taylor was bathed in so much blood, few could believe his victory or bear to accept him as a leader.And what are we to make of that, according to Yaz?
Yet there he was, that same year with a whole bunch of the rich and powerful invited by Nelson Mandela to tour on a five-star train in South Africa and then on to his presidential residence.
State villainy carries on in the world because high-minded leaders can let go of moral principles when the time, cause or price is right.Even African ones, it seems...
If turning out genuinely rehabilitated prisoners who do not go on to commit serious offences once released is the stated aim of the British prison system – and why wouldn't it be? – then HMP Grendon has been a success for 48 years.And this chap should know. He’s a former inmate.
For this reason, the death of Robert Coello, a 44-year-old convicted paedophile, at the prison in Buckinghamshire, could be just what HM Prison Service has been waiting for. The institution is very expensive to run, costing between £45,000 to £50,000 per prisoner a year, as opposed to £38,000 in other male category-B prisons. This doesn't please the bean-counters at the Ministry of Justice, nor does Grendon's success show the rest of the prison system in a good light.That difference in cost seems to me to be minor, if it effects a real change.
All inmates at Grendon are volunteers and before entering the therapeutic regime they used to be vetted by probation and psychology staff to ascertain their genuine desire to change, and given an IQ test to ensure they were intelligent enough for the daily cognitive group therapy sessions.Ah, I see. So they are selecting those most likely to benefit. Surely, that’s sensible? Even the late, unlamented government has to have seen the benefit in th...
Before this murder there had never been a serious violent incident at Grendon. That it has happened now is, sadly, no surprise. Until 2002 Grendon had a waiting list of approximately 200 prisoners. And then HMP Dovegate, a privatised prison in Staffordshire, opened its own therapy unit and took those prisoners who had been waiting for Grendon. Unfortunately, the opening of Dovegate, and other smaller therapy units throughout the prison system, had the effect of forcing Grendon to compete for "customers" in a market where it was once the sole provider. This meant Grendon had to significantly lower its once strict acceptance criteria.Hmmm, 2002. Remind me, who was running the Home Office when that decision was taken?
Other jails were now doing Grendon's job a lot cheaper, albeit with nowhere near its success rate. So some things had to change.Oh oh…
The first thing to be quietly phased out was the "drug-free" rule. Previously, in order to even get on to the induction wing at Grendon, an inmate had to prove – via mandatory drug testing – that he was at least six months clear of any drug use, including psychotropic prescription drugs.
It was still against the constitution to take drugs at Grendon, but now exceptions were being made for some prescription medication, and men were getting off the prison transports still under the influence of heroin./facepalm
Gone was the battery of interviews, and even the IQ test was dropped./doublefacepalm
By the time I left Grendon, getting there was as simple as expressing mild interest to a probation officer or psychologist.Oh, FFS..!
A prison-based therapy unit can only function effectively if the inmate volunteers have a genuine desire to change, and without safeguards at the induction stage there is no way of weeding out the wasters.Well, we certainly weeded out some of our wasters, at the General Election.
A couple who painted their side of a garden fence have been fined £80 for 'criminal damage'.Fined? By a court? Surely even the dimmest magistrate would be hard pushed to…
They were fined after a neighbour complained to the police that it was actually her fence, and flecks of green paint had splashed onto her side - which was brown.Yes, they complained about flecks of pant, and instead of telling them it was a civil matter, or just laughing and putting the phone down, the police actually turned up…!
Officers visited Kay Balsdon, 47, and her 29-year-old partner Chris Bates - and they were threatened with prosecution if they refused to accept the on-the-spot fine./facepalm
Mrs Balsdon said: 'When the police turned up at my door I thought it was a prank. I just couldn't believe it - I was expecting Jeremy Beadle to pop out at any moment.'I can quite understand why. Though I suspect even Beadle might find that scenario just that bit too far fetched…
Mr Bates a postman, said: 'I'm amazed that there was such a waste of police time over something so petty. 'Me too. Particularly as this sort of thing is usually something they complain about.
Hampshire Police said it had decided to refund the fine.Oh, it has ‘decided’, has it? When? When the ‘Mail’ got hold of the story?
A spokesman said: 'The officers gave this a lot of consideration and decided that this was the best way to deal with it. However, we have now reviewed the case and the fine will be rescinded and refunded.'I’m frankly surprised that the officers in the Hampshire force are of such poor quality that this sort of thing takes up ‘a lot of consideration’…
A car thief died after two burly truckers stopped him trying to steal a 4x4 then sat on him until the police arrived, an inquest heard.Yeah, you know what’s coming now, don’t you?
Mr Machin and Mr Jones were arrested on suspicion of unlawful killing and spent months on bail until the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to take action.Great! That’s a few more on the DNA database, eh, chaps?
The inquest heard police, paramedics and hospital medics all failed to revive Doherty, who lived in Stockport, Greater Manchester, but was in Stoke-on-Trent for a family funeral.Hope they got a ‘buy one, get one free’ deal…
Two men have been found guilty of running a Leyton gun factory producing “James Bond-style” weapons.Well, they certainly had the smarts of Bond villians, anyway:
The CCTV that the duo had set up to avoid detection contributed to their convictions./facepalm
The 32-year-old founder of charity Kiya Survivors let her house in Wordsworth Street, Hove, to Miss Nobre in February while she spent two months helping poverty-stricken communities in Peru.This was on the understanding that, when she returned, the shorthold tenancy would be up so that she could move back in with her four-year-old son.
Despite being on an assured shorthold tenancy and having agreed she would leave the property when Miss Butler and four-year-old Bruno returned, the unwelcome guest is still there.And the reason why is because...well, despite the property being the the rightful possession of Miss Butler, the law grants tenants rights over and above even legally-agreed contracts:
Miss Butler said: “She told me she had lost a lot of money on the stock exchange and couldn’t pay her rent. I tried to reason with her but she said she couldn’t pay and she wouldn’t leave.In any other country, the authorities would back up Miss Butler.
She has contacted Brighton and Hove City Council, the Citizens Advice Bureau and Sussex Police but none have been able to help her with her dispute, which has already cost her more than £1,000 in legal fees.I can't understand it either...
She said: “I spend my life helping people who have been made homeless but never thought it would happen to me. I can’t understand how I can have no right to enter the home I bought, lived in for five years and where I brought my son into the world.”
The Queen's practice of sending telegrams to people on their 100th birthdays can hardly continue for ever when the country is to be flooded with centenarians.Really? I fail to see why not.
Nobody wants to die young, but this ageing business is getting out of control. Having been born in 1940 rather than 2010, I am pleased to say that my chances of reaching 100 are extremely slim.My, someone peed in your cornflakes this morning, didn’t they?
There comes a point when one starts to say to oneself that one is glad that certain scary things – the flooding of London, nuclear war, the end of the world or whatever – are unlikely to happen during one's lifetime. It is comforting to know that one's risk of exposure to serious unpleasantness is getting rapidly smaller, but future generations may not enjoy that solace.Oh, good lord…
If expectations in France are anything to go by, the growing number of old people in Britain may also threaten Kenneth Clarke's plans to cut the prison population.Well, certainly if the example of Mr Whatley is anything to go by.
