Life With The Criminal Classes…

An East Lancashire drug dealer has been jailed for three years four months today for possessing three shotguns — for just six minutes.

So? Does it matter how long they were in your possession for? Surely what matters is that they were illegal…

Simon Day, 42, of Walmsley Road, Rishton, had been offered the shotguns – stolen from a house in Brindle – because word had gone out in the criminal underworld that he was a wanted man.

Preston Crown Court heard that Day needed protection because an unnamed serial armed robber, serving 10 years for an incident in which a security guard had been shot, had been labelled a 'police insider' – and blamed Day for the rumour.

Day was out on licence at the time of the incident in September 2010, having been jailed in 2005 for setting up a £100,000 drug deal involving 20,000 ecstasy tablets.

Oh, what a lovely bunch!

Farid, a father-of-two, from Zion Road, Blackburn, was also found with £6,000 of cocaine.

Clearly, Mr Farid sees himself as a better class of criminal:

His barrister Timothy Ashmole said: “Farid does not want to be seen as a professional facilitator of firearms.”

Just an amateur one, then?

Nathaniel Rudolf, for Day, argued his client had managed to run a legitimate business as a car trader and had only had the guns in his possession for six minutes, his motive being 'for the preservation of life'.

Wow! That’s class barristering, that is: ‘Ignore my client’s long history of evildoing, and concentrate on the fact that he’s a successful second hand car dealer, ladies and gentlemen of the jury…’

Hard to see how he didn’t win with that one, eh?