Off on one
Thursday, October 6th, 2011 01:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caddymanBah! String him up, I say. Throw away the key! String him up AND throw away the key!
I have just been reading the latest attempts of poor little rich boy, Charlie Gilmour, to get his sentence reduced for his part in the student fees riots in December last year.
The latest defensive argument appears to run along the lines of, “Yes, M’Lud, my client did indeed act like an utter arse. He admits that he took LSD, valium and whisky and proceeded to play Tarzan from the Cenotaph. However, being a country boy, the son of a multimillionaire rock star with no access to a TV, he did not know what a cenotaph is. More to the point, he is so insulated from reality that he does not know what a war memorial is, much less the Cenotaph.
“And please don’t bang him up for bunging a bin at a car containing the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, because frankly, he cannot recall doing that because he was out of his head on alcohol and drugs and if he can’t remember doing it, he can’t have done it. QED.”
The argument rather boils down to the supposition that Charlie Gilmour, with the mental prowess of a vacuum cleaner (who somehow overcame this mental handicap to become a history student at Cambridge University) and completely out of that small working portion of his brain on various intoxicants is actually a deprived child because he never had access to a television and therefore it is not his fault that he reacted badly.
Also, and the logic of this is irrefutable, a short, sharp, shock would be more of a punishment and a greater deterrent than banging him up in choky for a nominal 16 months of which he will serve a maximum of eight.
Well that’s all right then.
By the way, help with the legal fees by buying the entirety of his Dad’s band’s re-released back catalogue, if you’d be so good.
I hope the judge is a Genesis fan.
I have just been reading the latest attempts of poor little rich boy, Charlie Gilmour, to get his sentence reduced for his part in the student fees riots in December last year.
The latest defensive argument appears to run along the lines of, “Yes, M’Lud, my client did indeed act like an utter arse. He admits that he took LSD, valium and whisky and proceeded to play Tarzan from the Cenotaph. However, being a country boy, the son of a multimillionaire rock star with no access to a TV, he did not know what a cenotaph is. More to the point, he is so insulated from reality that he does not know what a war memorial is, much less the Cenotaph.
“And please don’t bang him up for bunging a bin at a car containing the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, because frankly, he cannot recall doing that because he was out of his head on alcohol and drugs and if he can’t remember doing it, he can’t have done it. QED.”
The argument rather boils down to the supposition that Charlie Gilmour, with the mental prowess of a vacuum cleaner (who somehow overcame this mental handicap to become a history student at Cambridge University) and completely out of that small working portion of his brain on various intoxicants is actually a deprived child because he never had access to a television and therefore it is not his fault that he reacted badly.
Also, and the logic of this is irrefutable, a short, sharp, shock would be more of a punishment and a greater deterrent than banging him up in choky for a nominal 16 months of which he will serve a maximum of eight.
Well that’s all right then.
By the way, help with the legal fees by buying the entirety of his Dad’s band’s re-released back catalogue, if you’d be so good.
I hope the judge is a Genesis fan.
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-06 01:52 pm (UTC)I'm with you - make him pay for what he did. I wish the media would stop covering it though - I'be had enough of seeing his mother and her moaning on twitter.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-06 02:07 pm (UTC)I certainly brought out my inner reactionary! ;-D
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-06 02:42 pm (UTC)The line in the Metro last night appeared to be 'please let him out, he was only acting up.'
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-06 02:54 pm (UTC)Prison for him, for a long time. A very long time.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-06 03:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-07 06:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-07 06:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-07 06:47 am (UTC)The judge *is* a Genesis fan!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-09 12:57 am (UTC)But seriously, in the face of too much "rich/famous person gets away with murder" that's going on, it's nice to let the punishment fit the crime
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-07 09:09 am (UTC)If I might play Devils Advocate for a moment :) the charges break down as
- took a lot of drugs and was then stupid in a public place > illegal but seldom prosecuted, especially for jail time
- swung off the Cenotaph > unarguably incredibly rude & disrespectful, but I didn't know it was illegal. Maybe that's because we didn't get a tv until I was 8, though.
- threw a bin at a car with people in it > endangering human life, so I agree should be prosecuted for jail time. Given you only get 3 years for (accidentally) hitting & killing a child in your car, and you can be out in half that, 16m seems a lot if nobody was hurt.
Speaking as someone who will have to save £250/month from birth to give my child a chance to go to university without incurring nearly £60,000 in soon-to-be-privatised debt, and who teaches a lot of young people whose parents definitely won't be able to afford that, I feel pretty angry myself.