Help! I need somebody, help! Somebody please, please help me, help me! Not wishing to burst into song but I do need some help in figuring out a conundrum. “How can we help you, Miss J?” I hear you ask.
Well, it’s come to my attention (as these things do) that a woman by the name of Inderjeet Kaur, after appearing in court, was immediately jailed for eight months for sitting 150 driving tests for other people. Twenty-nine-year-old Miss Kaur from Llanelli, South Wales, conned the Driving and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) not only in Wales but plied her trade as far afield as Birmingham and London. She took the driving tests, for which she was paid, for candidates who could neither speak nor read English.
The thing is, did such a crime warrant a jail sentence? An immediate jail sentence at that? The police officer in charge of the case, a DCI Steven Maloney, said that in doing what she did Miss Kaur put innocent road users at risk. That is, she allowed “unskilled and dangerous motorists to have seemingly legitimate licences.”
A jail sentence though. Was this harsh or not? I know for a fact, as some of us may do, that many people are driving on our roads who do not have ‘legitimate licences’. Firstly, because they started to drive before the driving test was introduced on 1st June 1935 (yes, I am very learned!), and the Highway Code wasn’t even a dream of any kind.
Whatever your views on whether Miss Kaur was a serious and dangerous criminal that should be kept off our streets, in the name of public safety, is something to ponder.
Then I read this, ‘A woman who hit her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend with a stiletto shoe-shaped designer perfume bottle has been spared jail’. Say what? Spared jail? Shocked, I was. Story goes. Twenty-year-old Jessica Baker was in a relationship with the ex-boyfriend of Amelia Duckwork. The two women got into a fight on social media about this boyfriend. Then the fight became real rather than stayed virtual. That’s when Jessica Baker ambushed Amelia Duckworth and smashed her face in with the stiletto-shaped perfumed glass bottle. She glassed the woman. I have seen the pictures. It’s not a pretty sight. Blood and cuts. The woman will probably be scarred for life. As well as glassing her, Baker also knocked Amelia Duckworth unconscious. How and why was she spared jail? Yes, she did get a custodial sentence, of 12 months, for actual bodily harm (ABH) and for being in possession of an offensive weapon, but that was suspended for two years. So, she walks free! From court!
How do you reconcile these two decisions? Somebody’s actions which could ‘potentially put lives at risk’, jailed immediately against someone whose actions actually caused bodily harm and trauma, gets to go home?
Help me out here!
