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EXPRESS COMMENT

ONE JUDGE'S SENSE SPOILED BY LENIENCY OF OTHERS

Evren Anil was brutally killed by yobs

Sunday April 6,2008

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SIR PAUL Coleridge’s grim warning of the collapse of family life has put into words the fears shared by millions of ordinary British people.

In a speech to lawyers yesterday Sir Paul, a High Court judge, warned that in some parts of the UK, “family life, in the old sense, no longer exists”.

He argues that almost all of the problems bedevilling young people – binge drinking, drug abuse and teenage pregnancy – afflict children from families with fractured parental relationships, or none at all.

We applaud Judge Coleridge’s courage and common sense in speaking up for family values. The Government claims that family-friendly policies have been at the top of its agenda for the past decade but they haven’t.

Gordon Brown must act to help parents stay together. Family breakdown has become a crisis. “It is as big a threat to our society as terrorism, street crime or drugs,” says Sir Paul.

It is a pity that not all judges are as level-headed.

Our sympathy today is with the mother of Evren Anil, a young man who died after being attacked by two youths who threw a chocolate bar into his car.

Mrs Anil is bewildered at the leniency of the punishment given to her son’s attackers. Despite the severity of the crime, Judge Ann Goddard sentenced the guilty pair to just four years in prison.

Because the accused had spent so long in custody before the trial began, they could be out of prison in just 18 months.

In the name of justice and common decency, we urge the Attorney General to appeal against this decision and replace it with a proper spell behind bars.

HOLD ON A SEC - FAMILY LIFE IN THE OLD SENSE? AND WHO IS RESPONSIBLE IN PART FOR THAT? JUDGES WHO MADE THE FAMILY LIFE AS IN ELTON JOHN AND HIS "PARTNER" POSSIBLE

06.04.08, 10:33pm

When you enact laws, rule on matters, make it possible for family life, a man and his wife and the kids, now the domain of a man and a man - and sometimes the kids, or a woman and a woman, you defile the very nature of what a family is all about. In the old sense as Sir Paul points out. It's the judges who have enabled the family life in the new sense possible.

Little wonder that familes are falling apart. Anything goes now. Does Sir Paul really divorce the meltdown from what is now not only permitted under law but actively encouraged?

So Gordon Brown, being the present government, needs to do something about it? Exactly what? Should he make a personal visit to every family? 10 Commandments in hand? The last time he ventured to knock on the door of a householder he was greeted with sneers by the newspapers and the Daily Express in particular.

You are all a bunch of hypocrites. And if Sir Paul does not add the judges' rulings into the equation, he's a hypocrite too.

• Posted by: Rothaymere • Report Comment

ONE JUDGE SENSIBLE, OTHERS SPOIL THE SENSE.

06.04.08, 7:31pm

"Sir paul" was bang on. Yet even allowing for the feeble minded judiciary who follow the party line, the reasons still go back to 1997 when this bunch of yo-yos took over a country' of which they, the Scottish , had been jealous of and secretly (sic) hated for centuries. A friend of mine had a contract issued in early '97 to help in the construction of two new prisons and the building of new wings in other existing prisons. This socialist mob already had it's agenda firmly rooted, amongst which ideas was one to cut prison places - how to deal with new offenders would be by "social guidance", probation etc. All work on new prison places was stopped. A lot of good money went down the drain (as usual), and my friend's wasted efforts were copied by many others. These lenient sentences today that shock the public every day are the logical result. The bent and twisted of our country now sneer at the "law", and especially at the hamstrung judiciary.When will our country grow up, get politically mature, and see how every socialist government we have ever had - ever had - has done nothing but harm?.

• Posted by: bluenote • Report Comment

SIR PAUL

06.04.08, 5:05pm

You can bet your bottom dollar that if this had happened to one of our so called Judges son's these vermin would have been shut away for years. There is too much of a discrepancy in sentencing and the public are never sure whether these awful people will be off the streets for a short while and then released under the heading 'overcrowding in our prisons'.

• Posted by: Tip • Report Comment