And The Answer Is....

..."Yes, she's the reason you're behaving like this and expecting to get away with it.":

Matthew Mawhinney, 29, became rowdy on the flight home from filming the second series of Netflix dating show Too Hot to Handle in the Caribbean on February 7.

The defendants became abusive after being repeatedly told to put facemasks on and being informed that the captain had decided they should not be served any more alcohol.

In a hearing at Uxbridge Magistrates' Court on Friday, prosecutor Christelle McCracken told the court that stewardesses Heather Wenn and Sophie Griffiths had been the target of most of the abuse.

When Ms Wenn told Mawhinney he would not be getting any more drinks, he told her: 'Go and f****** look up who my mum is – Baroness Scotland, I'm a gold card holder – go and get me a drink.'

Lovely!  

District Judge Deborah Wright said the three defendants behaved with a 'profound sense of entitlement without any regard for the crew or any of the other passengers on the flight'.

I wonder where they could possibly have got that from? 

Mohamed Reza Ally, for Johnson and Greenslade, said: 'They are aware that things are not going to be easy in relation to the publicity.

'This behaviour on any view is wholly out of character, and in my submission that should be born in mind.'

I guess you didn't learn any Latin in law school, then? Like 'In vino veritas'..?

Each defendant was fined £1,500, ordered to pay £500 each to Ms Wenn and Ms Griffiths, and ordered to pay a victim surcharge of £150 and £85 costs for their abusive behaviour.

They were ordered to pay a further £100 for refusing to put on their masks when told to by the captain.

It's chickenfeed, to people like this.  

The New 'We Must Learn Lessons'...

The review calls for “critical lessons” to be “translated into action”.

Hmmmm. Yes, it's this case: 

Despite previously assaulting police and a restaurant worker, and hitting support staff with a brick, Bravery was not considered a risk to others at the time.

Shows how much they knew, eh? 

Bravery, who told horrified onlookers that social services were to blame for the atrocity, is currently serving a 15-year minimum prison term for attempted murder.

It's hard not to think he's partially right, while also being horrified that throwing a child off a high rook only attracts 15 years in the slammer... 

...the review also found that, while Bravery’s case was characterised by “appropriate efforts by professionals from across agencies to access assessment and treatment for (him)”, those efforts “were stymied due to the lack of services, placements and provisions that were suitable for his needs as an autistic young person with a co-existing conduct disorder diagnosis”.

Yes, he's the 'victim' here, according to these people. Doesn't that emphasis explain - at least partially - how things like this happen? 

A psychiatric report in 2018 said Bravery had learnt to use his autism as an excuse to evade responsibility for dangerous behaviour.

He's not the only one, is he? 

"We Stopped Counting It, So It's Gone Down..."

A year ago, as the coronavirus began to spread across Maryland, Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby stopped prosecuting drug possession, prostitution, minor traffic violations and other low-level offenses, a move aimed at curbing Covid-19's spread behind bars.

That shift — repeated by prosecutors in many other cities — didn’t just reduce jail populations. In Baltimore, nearly all categories of crime have since declined...

Umm... 

...confirming to Mosby what she and criminal justice experts have argued for years: Crackdowns on quality-of-life crimes are not necessary for stopping more serious crime.

Wait, what? 

On Friday, Mosby announced that she was making her pandemic experiment permanent, saying Baltimore — for decades notorious for runaway violence and rough policing — had become a case study in criminal justice reform.

It's a case study in something, all right! 

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University found sharp reductions in calls to police complaining about drugs and prostitution, she said.

Because if they aren't going to do anything about it, what's the point..? 

Maybe Their Proofreaders Are Very Slow..?

Britain's most dangerous prisoners are more likely to reoffend when they leave jail if they are put on a high-profile rehabilitation programme, the Daily Mail can reveal.

A bombshell study reveals that offenders who went through the programme posed a greater risk than those who had not – and they went on to commit more crimes after their sentences ended.

Well, thank goodness someone was evaluating this and can take swift action to...

Oh. 

Yet the Ministry of Justice, which commissioned the study, has still not published the report – nearly three years after it was finished.

*sighs* 

The OPD pathway budget in 2016, the last year for which figures are available, was £64 million.

The beancounters are clearly even slower! 

Chalk Up Another Win For Carrie..?

To animal welfare activists, it's 'torture in a tin'; to gourmets – or at least some of them – it's a delicious delicacy.

Now Britain is set to ban the import of foie gras in a post-Brexit move that should delight anti-cruelty campaigners.

And someone very close to the seat of power at No 10, no doubt. 

Sources said yesterday that Lord Goldsmith, the Animal Welfare Minister, is determined to implement the ban 'in the next few months'.

There's no more pressing concerns for his department to work on, then? 

Last month, he congratulated Fortnum & Mason after the Queen's grocer announced that it would no longer stock the delicacy, usually sold as a pâté or mousse made from the enlarged livers. At the time, Lord Goldsmith tweeted: 'Foie gras is unbearably barbaric. It's hard to imagine anyone could watch the process and still enjoy eating it.'

Don't they say the same about sausages? Oh, and laws? 

Stop Pandering To These People!

Key witnesses at the Grenfell Tower public inquiry must not be allowed to give evidence “from their sofas”, survivors of the disaster have warned as hearings restart remotely over Zoom next week after a two-month Covid suspension.

Wait, I thought just a while ago you were whining about delays? Now it's going forward you're still unhappy?

Grenfell United said fully remote hearings meant traumatised members of the community would miss out on the catharsis of seeing figures with responsibility before the fire being held accountable in person.

Oh, FFS! This isn't the purpose of an inquest, and nor should it be... 

The inquiry last month decided to restart with fully remote hearings, although it has previously admitted video conferencing means witnesses “might relax and not feel the same pressure to be candid” or could be surreptitiously coached via text or email. 

If 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?' can crack this, I'm pretty sure the justice system can too!

The inquiry will ask witnesses to swear that they are alone in the room before they give evidence, but a spokesperson admitted there was an element of trust that witnesses would not use other devices.

Oh. Clearly not!  

Daffarn said: “So many of us have been waiting for so long for these people to be held to account in public. In my mind I have seen it playing out a thousand times. I have seen the courtroom, I have seen the witnesses I want to see struggling under the pressure they will be put under with the answers they cannot give … We need to get these people into the sunlight so we can feel cleaned by it as well.”

What you want isn't an inquest, or even justice. Sound a lot like revenge.  

The Real Cost Of Lack Of Consequences...

Smart motorways in their current format were signed off by then Tory transport minister Sir Mike Penning at the beginning of last decade.

However, he has always maintained he was misled about the risks of turning the hard shoulder into a live lane of traffic.

He also claims they don't resemble the designs he signed off and that Highways England has 'casually ignored the commitments' made to MPs on safety.

And have any civil servants been sacked? Dragged before PAC? Mildly admonished? 

A Department for Transport spokesman (said): 'As soon as the Transport Secretary took office he recognised the concerns around smart motorway safety and commissioned an urgent stocktake of the evidence, which we published a year ago - along with a £500 million, 18-point, action plan to make them safer still.'

Oh. No, of course not. We're just going to be forking over more cash to try to put it right.  

Highways England is facing possible manslaughter charges over the death of Nargis Begum, 62, who died on the M1 smart motorway in Yorkshire in 2018.

Bet that comes to nothing too.