Turn the other Cheek? No more. Let them suffer like the children.
People love to complain about their government and all its institutions. From heads of state to garbage collector: all, in their time – and often more than once - have stood blinking in the furious headlights of some citizen’s disgust and fury.
Sometimes, of course, our nations’ institutions go out of their way to exasperate us:
Denis Basford was threatened with a £70 litter fine - for brushing his dog in his car. A litter patrolman claimed some of the animal’s hairs were blowing out of the window.
Denis, 52, said: “I thought he was joking. All I was doing was brushing my dog and I was told I would be fined £70 unless I stopped.
“I showed him empty pizza boxes and cans next to a burned-out bin, but he said he couldn’t do anything about that.”
Still, however harsh and stupid the above may sound, there is something to say for this kind of clarity. Moreover, if the simple rule ‘Thou shall not litter’ is enforced with such remarkable zeal, then the collected citizenry should be able to sleep peacefully, safe in the knowledge that the state’s bloodhounds will guard that sleep against much more serious offences: burglary, rape, murder and what have you.
For if you threaten to fine someone over some dog hairs, then the true evil doers must tremble and fear the fierce shadow of the law, whenever they even contemplate breaking it. Right?
Yeah, right…!
A predatory paedophile walked free from court yesterday after admitting a string of sex attacks on children, including an 18-month-old baby.
Michael Porter, 38, used his trusted position as a prominent Jehovah’s Witness to prey on youngsters, many of them children of members of the church.
A respected member of the church in Somerset, Porter regularly babysat for youngsters, took them on holiday and invited them for sleepovers at his home.
He pleaded guilty to 24 counts of indecent assault and gross indecency over 15 years. But at Bristol crown court Judge Tom Crowther handed him a three-year community rehabilitation order after hearing he had undergone therapy.
The convict’s church said yesterday it would support him. A spokesman said: “He will be carefully supervised.”
You know, I’ve never been a very enthusiastic fan of the ‘We’re doomed’ choirs of life. Still, there is something seriously wrong with our societies and almost all the institutions that are supposed to serve us.
Anyway, for whatever it’s worth and whatever its efficacy, while I’m addressing the sacred, binary void, I would like to use the opportunity to officially curse both crown court judge Crowther and the Jehovah’s Witness Church:
May both man and Church suffer the same amount of fear, anguish, horror and excruciating pain as all the collective victims of Michael Porter.
Furthermore and still addressing whatever avenging force may be listening and willing to act:
It would, of course, also be nice if the offender himself could die a painful death, after a long and debilitating illness (starting, let’s say: now); helpless and afraid as all his victims were – and, in his fevered and sick mind, certain that what he suffered now was nothing compared to what will follow after his death.
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