Why Wont Pretty People Go To Jail?

So, let me get this straight in my head, because I really don't understand it.  A repeat offender, lets say for numerous drink driving offences, who has less than a weeks jail time served despite two convictions, is caught after failing a mandatory drugs test.  This wholly hypothetical person is then sentenced to prison, without bail, but that doesnt seem to matter and after a few days they are released on bail to face charges.  

Now here is the kicker.  This person, in a mood I can only describe as idiotic, decided to tweet that she had failed the court ordered drugs test, and in so doing effectively confessed to the crime that she had comitted.  A result of which, and the fact that they have booted her out of prison twice before on the grounds of overcrowding means that, once again, this person has failed to serve any serious time for an offence that, frankly, deserves at least some token punishment.  

Unless of course the stress of the judicial procedure where thoroughly nasty things are said about her - to her face - and she is made to cry by the nasty people who want to take away her freedoms because she had done something massively illegal.  Which of course would be punishment enough, open up the cells, everyone has suffered enough. 

Now I am not one to overuse prison as a form of punishment, and I certainly dont advocate removing every luxury from their cells and pumping in the Spice Girls soundtrack 24/7 to break the spirits of the poor condemned.  Or we could go one step further and play this purely hypothetical persons purely hypothetical movies in the cells every hour on the hour which is a direct violation of the code of hypothetical human rights.  I would not advocate for any of these, but what I would argue, beyond anything else, is that if society will use prison for these sorts of offences then surely the punishment should apply to everyone. 

The fact that this fiction has been given repeated hail mary passes is bad enough, but when one judge turns around and says enough is enough, they go over his head and appeal to another who will respect the rights of pretty people not to be inconvienienced in any way.  

This is a betrayal of everything that prison in western society is meant to stand for, for everything that law itself is meant to be for.  Something that people cannot appeal to be being spoiled and crying.  Or is that just me? 

Substance abuse may be a disease.  That doesnt excuse drink driving, that doesnt excuse the purchase and use of an illegal substance.  That doesnt excuse the fact that anyone else would face a jail sentence. 

 

Notes from a 'Third World' Island.

I didn't realise that I lived in the third world, but when you think about it, the aide to the Pope might have a point when he suggests that we are a backward, hopelessly lost nation. 

If you take away all of the distractions, the world class healthcare, the televisions, public transport, developed service industry, public transport, breweries, bakeries, jammeries, tea and coffee emporiums, theatres, cinemas, police force, democracy, fantastic universities producing the worlds leading figures in many fields, and computer games, and you are left with the distinct picutre of a society in utter ruins. 

Perhaps he is a columnist for the Express. 

He has said that he feels this way because of the grip of aggressive atheism. I believe what he is referring to are the recent comments by Stephen Hawking and the last few years of stuff that has come from the mouth of Richard Dawkings.  Of course, the militant atheism largely boils down to public speaking and publication.  

Militant religion on the other hand has a far more peaceful track record.

Implication is fun. 

Really, what annoys me about this statement is not merely how laughable it is for a man whose attitude to the AIDS crisis is to actively appeal to centuries old superstition and the 'cures' that wisdom has bought us, but how it actively paints a secular society as a wasteland of misery and suffering. 

I imagine that the Pope's aide was quite worried.  It must be daunting for a man living in the lap of luxury in a city and society where people believe you to be the living conduit of the almighty, to find himself in a country where he is regarded as a man in a dress.  More than being a man in a dress, he is a man in a dress who looks with disdain at other men who decide to wear a dress (albeit of a different sought) while belonging to a religion that defends and legally protects his colleagues when they abuse children.  He is afraid of appearing to be what he is, a laughable contradiction wearing a dress.  


Those in the vatican have said that this particular individual has pulled out of the brcasue of a touch of gout, and that he does not really believe that the UK is in the grip of secular atheism.  This hardly seems to be a satisfactroy answer.  Our secular society has bought us much in the way of freedom and amenities, it is the product of the enlightenment, of philosophies that attempted to push the knowledge of man beyond a dependence on the wisdom of a deity that shows no particular interest in us.  


That society has given us everything that we have, and I feel greatly in debt to it.   It has come into attack of late, we are dubbed to promiscuous, too lax in our morals and too free.  New technologies, specifically designed to increase our food productivity, are attacked as immoral and unnatural for a potential evil they may never cause.  


And no, science should not be permitted to plough unabated by morals and ethics, and all should be constrained by the will of society and her laws.  But those laws should be just, free from superstition, and reasonably argued.  By in large, by the way, we get things right.  And if you dont think so, you are allowed to question those in power by means of protest.  Laws can be changed, altered to fit the society it lives in and its needs, not the other way around.  


If that makes us barbarous, then pour me a pint of mead, fetch me my best wench and sharpen my finest monk hacking axe.  I feel a raid coming on.  











 

Look at this tart, all glistening in her underthings

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