OK, Judge Adrian, How About She Stays With You This Time?

Homeless Karen Bulmer, 47, has spent years making frequent appearances before magistrates courts in York and Leeds for her objectionable drunken behaviour that includes baring her bottom in public, urinating in a café and being aggressive towards staff and police.

She is currently serving a ten-week prison sentence after admitting the latest of many breaches of an antisocial behaviour order (ASBO) aimed at protecting the public. North Yorkshire Police with the Crown Prosecution Service applied for the successor to ASBOs, a criminal behaviour order (CBO), to be made, with conditions including banning Bulmer from York.

She opposed the order at York Magistrates Court through solicitor Craig Robertson.

Paid for – of course! – out of the legal aid budget. Still, if it brings some respite to the York populace, I’m all for it.

District judge Adrian Lower threw the application out saying there was no point in making the order as Bulmer had shown many times that the ASBO did not act as a deterrent, so it was unlikely any other order would improve her behaviour.

The judge said: “The sad fact is Karen Bulmer will change her ways when she wants to change her ways.

“There is little anyone can do to stop her from behaving in the way she has behaved,” he said.

Well, yes, if no-one bothers to use the laws granted by Parliament to do anything to try, she'll never stop. She might never stop anyway, but for the sake of everyone else, why not give it a shot?