Bristol Crown Court was told driver Stuart Brown was parked in Marconi Close, Weston-super-Mare, when the ball struck his vehicle.
When he remonstrated...
Oh, yeah. You just know where this is going...
...Lawrence Taylor punched him, before a later altercation in which Taylor struck Matthew Norton with his mum's walking aid.
A
crutch, that'd be.
Taylor, 29, of Sunnyside Avenue, Weston-super-Mare, pleaded guilty to common assault and assault occasioning actual bodily harm in October last year.
Judge Michael Roach handed him a 12-month community order, involving 12 months' supervision and a four-month curfew in which he must stay at home from 8pm to 7am.
Because you can't go around hitting strangers with your mum's crutch between the hours of 8pm and 7am. Outside of those times, it's presumably perfectly fine.
Robyn Rowland, defending, said his client had had a troubled early life and had turned to cannabis use to address resultant problems.
That worked out well, then!
He told the court Taylor had become a father and was engaging with social services to prove he wasn't a threat either to his partner or baby.
GAH!
Taylor's goal was to stop using cannabis as it wasn't helpful for him or the relationship he wanted with his family, the court heard.
Is it a goal he stands any chance of reaching?
Actually it's a gaol that's totally irrellevent.
ReplyDeletePlenty of people use canabis without becoming violent, just as many drinkers enjoy alcohol without becoming agressive.
The bloke clearly has behavioural problems - one suspects a disfunctional lifestyle and personality. Canabis is just a meaningless 'mitigation' excuse where one activity is being blamed for deeper problems. Correlation is not causation....
What happened to his old mum, though? The story doesn't tell us if she fell over due to her prop being whisked away.
ReplyDeleteThis little tale illustrates perfectly why the lawmakers and law enforcers are so misguided when it comes to matters concerning cannabis.
ReplyDeleteIn this case, and in innumerable others, it is being used as a mitigating factor, whereas in reality it is totally irrelevant to the crime committed. Anybody familiar with dope knows that it does not inspire violence - the very opposite in fact. But because the police and judges are totally ignorant of the actuality of cannabis use, they swallow this guff hook, line and sinker.
And worse, their understanding of it, garnered from various ne'er-do-wells (using it as an excuse for their anti-social behaviour) forms the basis for the laws pertaining to it.
I remember well, back in the 60s, being busted by the police for dope. Because they thought I was a kingpin in the supply chain, it wasn't the local boys from the Ladbroke Grove nick who came calling, but the "elite" drugs squad from New Scotland Yard. People who, you would think, really know their shit.
Wrong.
They didn't have a clue. The stuff they were coming out with during the "interviews" sounded like they'd gained their working knowledge of what they were "experts" in by reading the Daily Mirror, or asking some schoolkids who'd never actually seen or smelled it. I was stunned by their lack of information, their misconceptions. I would have laughed out loud had it not been inappropriate in the circumstances. But then I thought, "Well, I'm telling them a load of bullshit, so I guess everyone else they bust does, too..."
Hence the total misunderstanding of drugs in general by those who make and prosecute the law.
Like with computers; Garbage In, Garbage Out.
"Plenty of people use canabis without becoming violent, just as many drinkers enjoy alcohol without becoming agressive."
ReplyDeleteIsn't there a difference between the strengths of the typical stuff people smoked in the Sixties, and the stuff available now, though?
"What happened to his old mum, though? The story doesn't tell us if she fell over due to her prop being whisked away."
If she didn't, get the benefit fraud investigators round there, quick!
"Like with computers; Garbage In, Garbage Out."
Mmm, maybe.
"Isn't there a difference between the strengths of the typical stuff people smoked in the Sixties,"
ReplyDeleteYes, I believe so Julia, but as I had given up such student activity by the 70s I don't know how much. But that makes no difference to the argument. There is a lot of difference in strength between beer and spirits. Yet you end up similarly drunk, just means you drink more or less volume before you pass out.
As nisakiman notes, canabis tends to make people more laid back, not violent.