18 May 2011

I have assiduously avoided mentioning anything vaguely political or issues dealing with colour, race, class or creed, for the obvious reason that I do not wish to give offence to any of my readers who come from all corners of the earth. However there are two issues about which I feel quite strongly and that I shall mention, confident that the majority of my readers will be of the same mind.

The first concerns the freedom for our politicians to make honest statements. This is prompted by an attack, in the press, on the Minister of Justice, yesterday, Kenneth Clarke. As a result of the government bringing new mandatory sentences for rape the maximum sentence for the most serious cases remains Life Imprisonment, but, but for the general run of cases, if I put it that way, the mandatory sentence will be five years, with the caveat that the if the rapist pleads guilty and thud avoids the pain and suffering of the victim being subjected to a court case, the sentence can be halved to 2 ½. Years. All prisoners, as I understand it, normally become eligible for parole halfway through their sentence, this means of a rapist could be considered for early release after 2 1/2 years, which again can be reduced by 50% from the group behaviour, meaning that a rapist could be let out within 15 months. These proposals have caused the poor old Minister of Justice to be under severe attack for saying that some rapes are more serious than others. He attempted to put this right at the later interview by saying that all rapes were serious. However my point being that he merely made a perfectly honest statement for which he is being pilloried.

Clearly there is a wide difference between say a young couple who have been courting for some time who go out for the evening and both get a little tiddly and, on returning home, the male is feeling a little frisky and the female rejected his advances to a point where she says no but he is not prepared to accept and goes ahead anyway. This is classified as rape. Compare that with the case of a young woman walking home at night, through the park, pounced on by a hooded attacker with a knife who savagely attacks and rapes her in the most obscene manner leaving her very severely traumatised, bleeding and damaged after the event. Surely these two is should be dealt with in a different way and by the Minister of Justice saying that there are grades of rape he was merely stating the truth. Why is it then that our politicians cannot be more honest and state the obvious without arousing outrage in a few, and giving their political opponents the opportunity to howl for his resignation.

I would be interested to hear from my readers as to how many of them agree or disagree with me. I will deal with my second gripe tomorrow.