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11th September 2013: The world's gone mad and I'm the only one who knows
13th August 2013: Black is white. Fact. End of.
11th August 2013: Electric cars, not as green as they're painted?
18th June 2013: Wrinklies unite, you have nothing to lose but your walking frames!
17th May 2013: Some actual FACTS about climate change (for a change) from actual scientists ...
10th May 2013: An article about that poison gas, carbon dioxide, and other scientific facts (not) ...
10th May 2013: We need to see past the sex and look at the crimes: is justice being served?
8th May 2013: So, who would you trust to treat your haemorrhoids, Theresa May?
8th May 2013: Why should citizens in the 21st Century fear the law so much?
30th April 2013: What the GOS says today, the rest of the world realises tomorrow ...
30th April 2013: You couldn't make it up, could you? Luckily you don't need to ...
29th April 2013: a vote for NONE OF THE ABOVE, because THE ABOVE are crap ...
28th April 2013: what goes around, comes around?
19th April 2013: everyone's a victim these days ...
10th April 2013: Thatcher is dead; long live Thatcher!
8th April 2013: Poor people are such a nuisance. Just give them loads of money and they'll go away ...
26th March 2013: Censorship is alive and well and coming for you ...
25th March 2013: Just do your job properly, is that too much to ask?
25th March 2013: So, what do you think caused your heterosexuality?
20th March 2013: Feminists - puritans, hypocrites or just plain stupid?
18th March 2013: How Nazi Germany paved the way for modern governance?
13th March 2013: Time we all grew up and lived in the real world ...
12th March 2013: Hindenburg crash mystery solved? - don't you believe it!
6th March 2013: Is this the real GOS?
5th March 2013: All that's wrong with taxes
25th February 2013: The self-seeking MP who is trying to bring Britain down ...
24th February 2013: Why can't newspapers just tell the truth?
22nd February 2013: Trial by jury - a radical proposal
13th February 2013: A little verse for two very old people ...
6th February 2013: It's not us after all, it's worms
6th February 2013: Now here's a powerful argument FOR gay marriage ...
4th February 2013: There's no such thing as equality because we're not all the same ...
28th January 2013: Global Warming isn't over - IT'S HIDING!
25th January 2013: Global Warmers: mad, bad and dangerous to know ...
25th January 2013: Bullying ego-trippers, not animal lovers ...
19th January 2013: We STILL haven't got our heads straight about gays ...
16th January 2013: Bullying ego-trippers, not animal lovers ...
11th January 2013: What it's like being English ...
7th January 2013: Bleat, bleat, if it saves the life of just one child ...
7th January 2013: How best to put it? 'Up yours, Argentina'?
7th January 2013: Chucking even more of other people's money around ...
6th January 2013: Chucking other people's money around ...
30th December 2012: The BBC is just crap, basically ...
30th December 2012: We mourn the passing of a genuine Grumpy Old Sod ...
30th December 2012: How an official body sets out to ruin Christmas ...
16th December 2012: Why should we pardon Alan Turing when he did nothing wrong?
15th December 2012: When will social workers face up to their REAL responsibility?
15th December 2012: Unfair trading by a firm in Bognor Regis ...
14th December 2012: Now the company that sells your data is pretending to act as watchdog ...
7th December 2012: There's a war between cars and bikes, apparently, and  most of us never noticed!
26th November 2012: The bottom line - social workers are just plain stupid ...
20th November 2012: So, David Eyke was right all along, then?
15th November 2012: MPs don't mind dishing it out, but when it's them in the firing line ...
14th November 2012: The BBC has a policy, it seems, about which truths it wants to tell ...
12th November 2012: Big Brother, coming to a school near you ...
9th November 2012: Yet another celebrity who thinks, like Jimmy Saville, that he can behave just as he likes because he's famous ...
5th November 2012: Whose roads are they, anyway? After all, we paid for them ...
7th May 2012: How politicians could end droughts at a stroke if they chose ...
6th May 2012: The BBC, still determined to keep us in a fog of ignorance ...
2nd May 2012: A sense of proportion lacking?
24th April 2012: Told you so, told you so, told you so ...
15th April 2012: Aah, sweet ickle polar bears in danger, aah ...
15th April 2012: An open letter to Anglian Water ...
30th March 2012: Now they want to cure us if we don't believe their lies ...
28th February 2012: Just how useful is a degree? Not very.
27th February 2012: ... so many ways to die ...
15th February 2012: DO go to Jamaica because you definitely WON'T get murdered with a machete. Ms Fox says so ...
31st January 2012: We don't make anything any more
27th January 2012: There's always a word for it, they say, and if there isn't we'll invent one
26th January 2012: Literary criticism on GOS? How posh!
12th December 2011: Plain speaking by a scientist about the global warming fraud
9th December 2011: Who trusts scientists? Apart from the BBC, of course?
7th December 2011: All in all, not a good week for British justice ...
9th November 2011: Well what d'you know, the law really IS a bit of an ass ...

 

 
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How much is your safety worth? When you walk about the streets, how much do you have in your pocket? Do you have an expensive watch or mobile phone? Do you carry your laptop in one of those lovely bags with loads of pockets? What's in your wallet - are you a credit card man or a cash man? Out and about round the town, what value would you put on yourself?
 
And if you were injured or traumatised so that you couldn't work, what would that be worth? Suppose you suddenly couldn't look after your family? Or couldn't do the business in bed? Imagine you lost all your confidence and couldn't bring yourself to leave the house? Or say you are a young, good-looking man or girl who suddenly finds themselves disfigured? Come on, what are you worth?
 
£75, that's what you're worth.
 
£75 was the average fine handed out to convicted muggers by magistrates in 2008. They rob, they attack, they punch, they stab, they terrorise, they maim, they ruin your life and it costs them just £75. That's the price of a modest meal for two in a mediocre restaurant. With wine. That's what you're worth; prawn cocktail, steak and chips with all the trimmings, a dessert called "Death by Chocolate", a bottle of pinot grigio, two espressos and a chocolate mint. That's your life, that is.
 
Magistrates are bound by rules which link the fine to the criminal's ability to pay. Offenders with no income except for state benefits, and who often have severe addictions to drink or drugs, receive lower fines. Of course, this only takes into account their legitimate income. How could it do anything else? Tory justice spokesman Dominic Grieve said: 'Ministers have tried to bully magistrates to give fewer jail and community sentences, but it is no wonder magistrates have little confidence in fines when ministers haven't bothered to uprate fine levels in all the time they've been in power. No wonder public confidence in the justice system has been undermined.'
 
Conservatives blame the failure of the Government to uprate the framework used for calculating the level of fines. This rulebook has not been changed to take account of inflation since 1992 - meaning statutory fine levels have effectively been halved.
 
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: 'Fines given in individual cases are a matter for the independent judiciary, as they have the full facts of the case in front of them.' In other words, “It's nothing to do with us, it's all the magistrates fault.”
 
John Thornhill, chairman of the Magistrates' Association, said the low level of fines was because many offenders were on benefits or low income. Offenders could also get up to a 30 per cent reduction in the level of fine for an early guilty plea, he added.
 
Meanwhile a minor parking infringement earns a £120 ticket in London, or £70 outside the capital. Speeding carries a £60 penalty. And before anyone unthinkingly trots out that lame old mantra "Commit the crime, do the time" or smugly points out that all you have to do is obey the law and you'll not get penalised, let it not be forgotten that speed limits are put in place by local councils simply because they're a cheap and easy way of avoiding the task of actually doing anything to improve our roads, and that increasingly those local councils are setting limits that do not accord with government guidelines. Also that statistically the most common cause of road accidents is not excessive speed, but driver inattention. It's hard to think of anything more likely to distract drivers from watching the road ahead than having to drive with one eye glued to the speedometer.
 
Recently a pet-shop owner, Joan Higgins, was fined £1,000 and placed under curfew after she unwittingly sold a goldfish to a 14-year-old boy taking part in a trading standards 'sting'. Magistrates ignored the fact that the sting was itself illegal: the law says she should not have sold the goldfish to an unaccompanied minor, but according to at least one newspaper report the boy was accompanied into the shop by a trading standards officer.
 
Back on the roads, Delshad Aziz did not have a driving licence and was working illegally when he pulled out at a junction in Hove and knocked a 44-year-old man from his scooter last year. The man died, leaving a widow and 2 small children. Aziz was jailed for just nine months. Sentencing him, Judge Anthony Scott-Gall said: “You were an unlawful driver who should not have been at the wheel of any vehicle. You should not have been working because you were not permitted to work but were trying to supplement the benefits you, your wife and children received. You did not take sufficient care when turning across that junction, resulting in an utterly calamitous and ghastly collision.”
 
This is Aziz's second jailed sentence. He got nine months in 2005 for trying to enter Britain illegally, but was nevertheless allowed to stay in the country and was caught driving uninsured months later in Peterborough and banned for a year.
 
In January this year a 14-year-old Coventry girl was surrounded and sexually assaulted in the street by a gang of youths. She was was walking to a friend’s nearby home in the middle of the day when she was ambushed by the group of eight boys – aged between 10 and 12 – who shouted at her to stop. They then surrounded the girl, repeatedly molesting her, before she managed to escape.
 
Police quickly rounded up the boys responsible; the girl was able to identify four of them. Five were arrested. Three, aged under 10, were not.
 
The CPS ignored the efforts of the police and decided not to prosecute – they said it was “not in the public interest”. The girl and her family have been forced to move home because they feared reprisals.
 
In Crowborough, East Sussex, two youths broke into the cellar of an Indian restaurant and tried to steal beer. The restaurant owner, Sal Miah, chased them and held them on the premises until the police arrived. A gang of the youths' friends then attacked the restaurant, kicking the door and windows. Mr.Miah went out and fought them off. When the police did eventually turn up, they arrested the astonished Mr.Miah on suspicion of assault and kept him in the cells for five hours. He was cautioned and released. He now has a criminal record.
 
Sussex police said Mr Miah should not have tried to apprehend the youths and should have 'observed from a safe distance' before dialling 999.
 
In Torquay a 61-year-old pensioner was stopped in his car by police. When his breathalyser test came up negative, they searched his car. In the glove box was a Swiss army knife he kept to cut up fruit on picnics with his wife. He was charged with possessing an offensive weapon, found guilty and given a conditional discharge. He now has a criminal record.
 
In Colchester an elderly couple set up a communal allotment for themselves and the other residents of their housing development. They called it The Magnolia Garden Project; the 24 residents of the council-owned flats helped to run it and received a free share of the food it produced, including apples, tomatoes, potatoes and runner beans. Janet Kearney and Terry Marshall were hailed as model citizens.
 
But their reputation counted for nothing when they confronted a neighbour who let her dogs foul the site. 'Neighbour from hell' Helena Moraldo, who owns three Jack Russells, let them loose on the allotment, damaged crops and was verbally abusive. Janet Kearney spoke to her about it, the police were called and arrested Janet. When Terry protested to the police, they arrested him as well. Both were taken to a police station where they were photographed, and had their DNA and fingerprints taken. They then spent around 20 hours in cells before being interviewed. The couple had to wait six months before they were told they were being charged and would have to appear in court.
 
However, after 'reluctantly' pleading guilty to avoid a trial, the district judge told them it was 'not appropriate' to punish them and gave them a conditional discharge. The CPS defended its decision to prosecute, saying there had been 'sufficient evidence' against the couple.
 
In West Yorkshire two masked robbers armed with an axe and a sword burst into a jeweller's shop. The jeweller, John Bradley, had just his bare hands but fought back, pushed the robber with the sword and disarmed him before chasing the pair out of the store with their own weapon.
 
Mr.Bradley hasn't been arrested yet, but it's only a matter of time.
 

 
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