Well, it certainly is if you happen to be in the UK at the moment. If you aren't from the UK you might not have heard. The eminently incompetent politician (I know, that describes all of them) and British Home Secretary, John Reed MP, sent out a memo to all judges to tell them about the chronic overcrowding in the decrepit prisons and asking them to only sentence those who have committed serious violent crime or persistent criminals to jail time.
Now that memo in itself raised plenty of comment in journalistic circles but what happened over the last two days has, hopefully, made the Home Secretary realise what a complete muppet he is. First a case featuring a man accused of downloading and having possession of child pornography; he was given a suspended sentence. Then today yet another paedophile was released, this time on bail. Now since the first man was only in court for downloading the filth, he may have gotten that sentence anyway, maybe. However in the second instance the judge stated that he would usually have remanded him but due to John Reed’s memo he was forced in to the action taken.
Then it was noticed that two people that were in court for tapping phone lines, intercepting mobile phone calls and messages; including those of Highgrove House (the home of HRH Prince Charles) have both been sentenced to 6 months in jail. Now either the content of that Home Office memo didn’t make it around all the judges in time or possibly the invasion of the royals and sundry ‘celebrities’ privacy is vastly more important then the safety of children. Either way something needs to be done; perhaps some items that might be discussed are building of new, larger prisons - The sentencing guidelines needing a revamping, to actually make criminals serve real jail time and standardise sentence length. Most important though is the need to keep the media attention whores in Westminster out of the actual running of these services and return them to the hands of civil servants (who should nevertheless be accountable). Let the politicians set laws but for the sake of all don’t let them instruct how these laws and the judgment of them are carried out.
