Jail the pasty-faced gurning poltroon

I SUPPOSE you’d expect me to line up alongside the Daily Mail in the ridiculous case of the un-deportable killer of London headmaster Phillip Lawrence and rant against the European Human Rights Act. Well no, actually, because there are two red herrings swimming about in this pool of politicking.

Firstly, the EHRA – rapidly becoming the ginger-headed stepchild of British society along with its sibling, the Health and Safety Executive - isn’t to blame for the fact that a Leftie quango refused to sanction the deportation of Learco Chindamo to Italy after completing 12 years of his sentence as the trial judge wished. Oh no, it’s much worse than that.

The Immigration Tribunal in fact relied upon another piece of European legislation, the 2004 Free Movement Directive, which makes it impossible for any European country to deport a citizen with 10 years residence unless matters of national security are at stake. This is not the case with Chindamo. He might well stab to death another innocent man in an unprovoked attack, but there’s no evidence that he’d then drive a Jeep into Glasgow Airport.

You won’t have heard of the 2004 Free Movement Directive because it was never subject to a full Parliamentary – never mind public - debate and was therefore never voted upon. It’s just another binding ruling from Brussels that impinges on our borders and our Sovereignty. (Stand by for many more of these once Wee Gordie Broon signs away what little remains of our island race independence.)

The second red herring? We shouldn’t be arguing about whether or not Chindamo should be packed off to Italy once he’s released early next year. We should be asking why a man who was convicted of murder and received a life sentence is being released after just 12 years in the first place, no matter how nice he is to the Governor and no matter how many GCSEs he got in prison.

AND IF you want further evidence that the Law is indisputably an Ass, you need only look to the criminal career of Mr Peter Doherty who, I am told, is a member of a popular beat combo.

This pasty-faced, gurning poltroon increasingly features in my toilet tabloids (those only fit to be read on the lavatory). It seems that he is forever being arrested by police for the possession of assorted Class A drugs or for various forms of violence. He then appears in court where a nannying, Guardian-reading magistrate decides to give him “one more chance”, whereupon the trilby-wearing tosser goes straight back out to get wasted as soon as possible.

This week he was at it again, accused of breaching bail conditions (ie sticking a needle up his arm), but freed by the court because the indolent Plod had failed to get him there in time. It’s laughable … especially for someone regarded as a role model by many young people.

I am old enough to remember William Rees-Mogg, editor of The Times, stealing a phrase from Alexander Pope to describe the three-month prison sentences handed out to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards for drugs offences back in 1967. (Marianne Faithful escaped prosecution because at that time cruelty to confectionary wasn’t illegal.)

“Who,” he asked, “would break a butterfly upon a wheel?” A noble sentiment when dealing with those of an artistic temperament. The recidivist Doherty does not qualify for that degree of mercy. He needs swatting.

STILL, IT’S not all bad news when it comes to soft sentences. A businessman who sold unfit meat to hospitals, schools and supermarkets has been jailed for six years. Peter Roberts, 72, endearingly known as “Maggot Pete” (was that not somewhat of a clue?) led a gang that made at least £1 million selling diseased chicken carcasses to meat wholesalers.

Now I’m not diminishing the seriousness of selling dodgy chicken to schools and hospitals (and very probably to those pubs specialising in £3.50 all-you-can-eat Sunday roasts), but one must admit that salmonella comes a long way second to MRSE and all the other superbugs the NHS will try to kill you with. One might also hope that the highly-trained chefs in these establishments would notice that the carcass they’re about to turn into Matron’s Chicken Surprise has turned green and is full of maggots.

Secondly, a six-year sentence for a 72-year-old? Surely you’d normally have to murder a headteacher to be banged up for that long?

MORE CATERING crime: A 12-year-old boy has been hauled through the courts in Manchester after being charged with common assault for throwing a cocktail sausage at a 74-year-old neighbour. That’s a cocktail sausage; not a Molotov cocktail sausage.

The decision to prosecute was taken because the little scrote had already been cautioned three times by police. His undoubtedly single mother says: “It had quite a bit of an effect on him. He couldn’t sleep. He takes sleeping tablets anyway, but they didn’t work.”

Twelve years old, a serial offender and on drugs? He’s clearly got a chipolata on his shoulder.

IF ALL the above has depressed you, then you can still revel in the brilliance of Britishness with the story of Vicky Mills and her one-legged chicken.

Mrs Mills, 24, was heartbroken when her pet Lily, a Rhode Island Red, got her leg trapped in a barbed wire fence. She took it to the vet and paid for him to try to save the leg rather than have her put down. When that treatment failed, she paid for an amputation. Seven operations later, further costs were incurred when the now one-legged chicken was subsequently diagnosed with depression, perhaps understandably.

The bill was rising, and Mrs Mills took out a bank loan, cancelled her holidays and lived on beans on toast for a year to pay it. And to ward off depression, the chicken now watches daytime television while her owner is at work.The cost of that one chicken leg? A cool £1,800. Cry your eyes out, Colonel Sanders. Still, there’s an immediate payback. As Mrs Mills says: “Sometimes she tries to scratch herself with her missing leg and falls over.” And you can’t put a price on entertainment like that.