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Cabbage EVERY day? Get me the Wicked Witch now!
Last updated at 7:52 AM on 6th September 2011
Sounding off: Keir Starmer contradicted the Prime Minister
The Director of Public Prosecutions has been sounding off about the sentences handed down to people convicted of taking part in the riots.
Keir Starmer said those involved should be treated like any other common criminal, not given exemplary punishments.
In an interview at the weekend, he directly contradicted the Prime Minister, who believes that sentencing in these cases should reflect the scale of the disorder and the public outrage.
Although he maintains he isn’t commenting on any individual case, he reflects the widely-held view on the Left that sentences have been too harsh.
While some people think, for instance, that the four-year prison term handed to two youths who used Facebook to incite violence was excessive, the courts are entitled to take into account the circumstances of the crime.
Whatever Starmer believes, there’s a world of difference between wholesale looting and a little light shoplifting.
If he can’t distinguish between a criminal mob, co-ordinating arson, violence and theft on an industrial scale, and a drunk putting his boot through a bus shelter on a Saturday night, he’s in the wrong job.
Actually, Starmer probably is in the wrong job. He built his career as a defence lawyer specialising in human rights — hardly the ideal background for running the Crown Prosecution Service.
He’s one of the leading lights of the yuman rites racket, which is why Labour appointed him in the first place.
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Starmer regards Britain’s adoption of the European Convention on Human Rights as non-negotiable and is viscerally opposed to Call Me Dave’s ambition to replace it with a British Bill of Rights.
Far from sharing the widespread concerns about the obvious and repeated ways in which British justice is perverted by European law, he thinks the Yuman Rites Act doesn’t go far enough and should be strengthened.
If he’s so adamant, he should resign and stand for election. This column has long since argued that the public will never get the criminal justice system most people crave until we can vote for our judges and police chiefs.
To that list, I’d also add the Director of Public Prosecutions and all his regional subordinates. In America, any district attorney who ignored the will of the people would quickly be booted out of office by voters.
The new breed of activist lawyers in Britain see the Law simply as a tool for advancing their own political agenda and undermining parliamentary democracy.
As I’ve remarked before, the criminal justice system is a fiercely-protected closed shop. The paying public don’t get a look in.
Labour spent its years in office stuffing the institutions with Left-wing placemen, nowhere more so than the Law. The previous DPP was Ken Macdonald, a member of the same legal chambers, Matrix, as the Wicked Witch.
The WW is, of course, the high priestess of the yuman rites racket.
Having failed spectacularly to become an MP, she campaigned ferociously for Britain to adopt the European convention. When her husband became Prime Minister, her wish came true.
Tony Blair called the incorporation of foreign human rights statutes into British law his ‘proudest moment’ in politics. The WW then co-founded Matrix Chambers, which is dedicated to cashing in on the new legislation.
'Wicked Witch': Cherie Blair, the high priestess of the 'yuman rites' racket
Now she sits as a judge, in which capacity she recently refused to jail a man convicted of smuggling £146,000 worth of cocaine.
She took pity on unemployed alcoholic Lee Williams, who claimed that because of his self-inflicted cirrhosis of the liver and diabetes he’d only two years to live.
Employing the kind of leniency last extended to the Lockerbie bomber, the WW sent Williams home to his mum and even rebuked the prosecuting lawyer for ‘behaving unpleasantly’ towards him during the trial.
Starmer and the WW are old friends, but curiously the DPP hasn’t commented on this particular sentence.
Clearly, though, someone at the CPS thought it was way out of kilter because Williams has just been re-arrested and sentenced to three-and-a-half years on appeal.
Williams complained before he was eventually carted off to jail: ‘It’s not nice in prison. You are bunged in there with nutters and the food is rubbish. It’s potatoes and cabbage every day. There’s no television and you can’t listen to the radio.’
I’d have thought there were definite grounds for a yuman rites case here. Prisoners have already won the right to heroin and pornography behind bars, so depriving Williams of TV and making him eat a constant diet of potatoes and cabbages could be probably construed as cruel and unusual torture.
He shouldn’t have too much trouble attracting the services of an ambitious brief on legal aid. I’m sure the Wicked Witch can put him in touch with someone at Matrix.
With any luck, he’ll be back with his mum in no time.
And the good news is that he’ll free up a prison cell for one of those looters Keir Starmer thinks are being so unfairly punished.
Why aren’t we Chechen his story?
Cover story: Have-a-go hero Valentine Simatchenko
The cover story of the Ukrainian have-a-go hero is unravelling by the day. Valentine Simatchenko, who tripped a fleeing knifeman at the Notting Hill Carnival, was worried about being identified in case he lost his disability benefit.
He was granted indefinite leave to remain in Britain in 1996. Mr Simatchenko, 55, claimed asylum after saying he had fought against the Russians in the Chechen civil war and his life would be in danger if he was forced to return home.
Now the Mail on Sunday has tracked down his mother, who has a different version of events. She says that far from fighting against the Russians, he was once a member of the Soviet Army.
As far as she knows, he’s never been to Chechnya, either. He wouldn’t have been able to fight, anyway, because of head injuries he’d sustained when he was working in a warehouse in St Petersburg.
He also says he was unfairly dismissed from his job as a police officer. But documents show he was accused of murdering two people, then not investigating their deaths.
And as for him not being able to return home, his mum says he’s been back to the Ukraine four times since settling in London, where he and his family live on welfare handouts, naturally.
He claims disability benefit for injuries and stress allegedly suffered during the war in Chechnya.
His old mum may be a bit confused, but something doesn’t add up here. Who knows what the truth is? Does no one ever check their stories? Of course not.
We have fed and watered Valentine Simatchenko and his family for 15 years and he is on course to be granted British citizenship. His mother says he hasn’t done a day’s work since he arrived in England.
It only goes to show the ease with which anyone can turn up in Britain from anywhere in the world, pretend to be fleeing persecution, and waltz straight into a council flat and a life on benefits. No questions asked.
In this case, we may even be harbouring a double murderer. If he hadn’t stuck out his leg in front of a stabbing suspect, we would be none the wiser.
So will there now be a thorough official investigation into his background before we give him a passport and let him continue to live here at taxpayers’ expense?
What do you think?
Plans have been unveiled to disband the Scottish Conservatives because the brand is simply too contaminated north of the border.
It would be replaced with a shiny, new, less toxic Right-of-centre party. Why not? The Tories have been all but wiped out in Scotland. Support fell to just 12 per cent in the latest poll.
Here’s another idea.
Given the damage Gordon Brown did to Britain and the latest revelations in Alistair Darling’s book, we’d all be better off if the Scottish Labour Party was disbanded, too.
Diners at an award-winning restaurant in Galway are renowned for their discerning palates.
Marinas, at the four-star Radisson Blu Hotel, is proud of its creative international cuisine.
But even sophisticated foodies were surprised when they found themselves being offered roast stuffed Aborigine, with coconut and lemon grass in a coriander sauce.
What was going on? Had someone let Rolf Harris loose in the kitchen? Turns out it was a spelling mistake. It should have read ‘Aubergine’.
Still, I’d give the horse’s d’oeuvres a miss. Just in case it’s not a misprint.
Make mine a large Bloody Maori.
I’ve got to the bottom of the Time Bandits mystery.
Last week it was reported that staff at five councils in the North East had run up thousands of pounds in premium-rate phone charges calling the Speaking Clock.
Since then I’ve heard from a number of current and former council employees with an explanation.
Apparently, the trick is to ring the Speaking Clock about ten minutes before close of business.
This not only makes everyone look as if they’re busy, it stops any irritating member of the public getting through with an inquiry which could drag on into unpaid overtime.
At the third stroke . . .
Explore more:
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- Ken MacDonald,
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- Gordon Brown
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