If you or I were so stupid or malevolent as to harass a person by phone and continue to do so even after being warned not to by police and to make an additional threat of dousing the object of harassment with acid and thereby put the victim into a state of fear, I’ve little doubt that an immediate custodial sentence would be likely. Such a sentence for such an egregious threat which was the culmination of a long term campaign of harassment against an individual would most surely be justified. What we are talking about here is not ‘offending’ someone with ‘hurty words’ but making an actual threat of violence, a seemingly credible one, against an innocent individual. If it was ‘John Smith’ or some other ordinary bod who did this they’d be looking at a term in gaol.
Not so the Labour MP Claudia Webbe. For all this mentioned above she’s been given the ludicrously lenient sentence of ten weeks imprisonment suspended for two years with an additional order to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work. She was also order to pay £150 court costs and £1000 compensation to the victim. This is an utterly disgracefully lenient sentence that does not fit the nature of the crime or its impact.
She’s basically got off with dishing out the sort of harassment that would get an ordinary person shoved behind bars extremely quickly. What a bloody joke.
Even taking into account that this was a Magistrates Court where longer terms of imprisonment cannot be handed down, this sentence does look far too weak. Those who are in positions of public authority such as Members of Parliament should be expected to be setting a behavioural example, not acting like some chavvy street thug, which is basically how Claudia Webbe has behaved. Compare this case and its outcome with what was done recently by the courts to some arsehole who racially abused footballers online. He got ten weeks immediate custody for an offence that is way less serious than this and one that did not involve threatening anybody with having acid thrown over them. I don’t condone racially abusing anyone but I can’t help notice the discrepancy between the sentence handed down to a gobby arsehole and the sentence handed down to Claudia Webbe for doing far far worse.
If there were any doubts among the minds of the general public that we have a two tier justice system that turns a blind eye to violent threats provided that they come from Members of Parliament then this case must surely remove any doubts whatsoever. Claudia Webbe has been indulged by the court when what they should have done is made an example of Webbe for straying from the standards which we expect Members of Parliament to live up to.
It’s possible that the imposition of a suspended sentence on Webbe will trigger a recall petition in her Leicester East constituency but that can only start when Webbe has exhausted her legal appeal chances. As the wheels of justice can roll very slowly it’s likely that the people of Leicester East will be saddled with this appalling, useless, thick as mince and criminal MP for a long while yet.
This case is a perfect and clear example of how in today’s Britain some animals, especially if they are MP’s are more equal than others.
I see a slightly more positive outcome from this weak sentence: further general dislike and rejection of the failing Labour Party.
In many ways, she is a typical Labour MP, selected for racist reasons rather than qualities expected in a public servant. (In fact, the very idea of ‘serving’, rather than ‘taking’, is anathema to Labourites.)
Long may she bring the party into disrepute!
You are probably correct here. Although Webbe has not been punished appropriately she does bring more public disgust Labour’s way. Labour must be worried about the affect on Labour’s image of Webbe and her association with them as they’ve announced that they’ve expelled her from the Party.
The trouble with the likes of Webbe, Vaz, Patterson (though there is enough doubt here to muddy the waters a bit) and a raft of other corrupt, venal and outright criminal MPs (e.g. Lutfur Rahman) is that they bring politics and democracy into disrepute.
This is being done by both Labour and Conservative pollies.
This in turn gets the Apathy Party new non-voters, which in turn leads to the re-election of said corrupt, venal and criminal people.
Of course, this also implies corruption throughout the national and local parties as well. If they were interested in fielding honest, decent people then the corrupt would get at most one term as an MP before being de-selected either at the local or national level.
Thus massive corruption, vertical and horizontal is hollowing out politics and threatening democracy itself.
First of all Lutfur Rahman was not an MP, he was the corruptly elected Mayor of Tower Hamlets. But I will agree with you that all of these named individuals with the possible exception of Patterson who seems to have not been given a proper chance to defend himself, do bring not just democracy but the political system into disrepute.
You are right in saying that their actions and similar actions by others increase the effect of the Apathy Party which means that we end up with even worse politicians than we would otherwise have got. I agree that corruption isn’t just a Westminster thing, it’s at nearly all levels of politics. I used to take a close interest in the politics of one particular East London borough and the politics there has been bent for decades. At one point the corruption was based around councillors and council officers membership of the freemasons but now the corruption is Islam based with councillors doing their utmost not to do their best for everyone, but to keep on board the Islamic community leaders who can most effectively get the vote out for Labour, the current councillors and the councillors mates.
Would a man, who behaved in the same way to a woman, – especially the threat of dousing them in acid, have received a harsher sentence?
Oh the ‘pussy pass’ does apply in this case no doubt but there must be more behind why she got such a lenient sentence a sentence much less harsh than a man would have been given.