THE Labourite’s Justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, was brought up for a time in Saudi Arabia. And it seems to have shaped her.
Because this week, she announced that paedophiles should be chemically castrated.
AlamyJustice Secretary Shabana Mahmood is looking at plans to make chemical castration mandatory[/caption]
GettyI believe the state does not have the right to vandalise human beings, no matter what they’ve done[/caption]
Yup. Nonces must be made to drink chemicals in such vast quantities that their scrotum becomes the size of a sultana. And I’ve been struggling to understand why a Starmerite would say such a thing.
I now think I have an answer. As we know, jail sentences these days are a joke.
You rampage through a packed shopping centre with a sword, are sentenced by the judge to do 15 minutes in the nick, and because prisons are so overcrowded these days, they release you before you’ve even had a chance to unpack your suitcase.
Burglars, vicious thugs, drug smugglers. They go to prison in the morning, have some pleasant sex with their attractive warden, enjoy a slap-up lunch and are home in time for tea.
And then, that night, they break into your house and steal your television.
This kind of thing doesn’t go down well with the electorate. But what if Ms Mahmood was able to argue that she’s releasing them because they are no longer able to commit their dastardly crimes?
What if she’s able to say that the nonce is safe to walk the streets because with no testicles, he has the same sexual urges as a tennis racquet.
She’s even alluded to this, saying that sex offenders could only be released from prison on the condition that the state reduces their testosterone levels to a point where they’d rather cheese grate their own face than have sex.
Those weren’t her actual words, but it’s what she meant. So what’s next?
Shall we cut off the hands of those who’ve been convicted of shoplifting? Run over people who’ve been caught speeding? Surgically implant a blade in the bottoms of those who’ve been done for a knife crime?
And what of those idiots who cut down the tree in Sycamore Gap? What does Ms Mahmood reckon we should do with them? Chainsaw them off at the shins?
Maybe that’s what Ms Mahmood has in mind. Because if she does this, it solves the problem of prison overcrowding at a stroke. People will be rehabilitated in no time at all.
The problem I have with this argument is that I don’t see prison as a place of rehabilitation.
I see it as a place where you go to be punished for the crime you’ve committed.
And as I believe the state does not have the right to vandalise human beings, no matter what they’ve done, my solution to prison overcrowding is different.
Build more prisons.
EMOJI WORLD RULES
ALARMING news from the world of boffinry.
Because it seems that the nation is forgetting how to use semicolons.
Researchers have announced that in books they studied from 2020, the punctuation mark was used once every 205 words.
Whereas today, it’s only used once every 390 words.
Who works this stuff out? And why? And what does it matter in a world where most people communicate using nothing but emojis.
Incidentally, I love putting random emojis at the end of my texts.
Because I know the recipient is going to spend all day working out why I’ve finished off with a picture of a snorkel and face mask. Ha.
No reason at all. Could just as easily have been a guitar.
Two-wheel transport for a slow news day
X/annaholliganBBC correspondent Anna Holligan’s bicycle has been stolen in Amsterdam.[/caption]
X/annaholliganIt was no ordinary bike as Anna Holligan had turned it into a mobile outside broadcasting studio[/caption]
I WAS greatly amused to hear this week that a BBC correspondent’s bicycle has been stolen in Amsterdam.
It was no ordinary bike. Because Anna Holligan had turned it into a mobile outside broadcasting studio, fitting it with solar panels and brackets for lights and cameras. It looked ridiculous. Like the back end of a bicycle had been welded to a wheelbarrow full of scrap.
What made me laugh though is that Ms Holligan, above with her bike, said that when she arrives at a breaking news story on it, people feel more comfortable with her as a journalist.
Really? I only ask because if you want to cover a breaking news story, surely you’re better off using a car.
If you go there on a bike, especially one that looks like it weighs about three tons, you won’t get there until the story you’re trying to cover has become about as topical as the volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii.
RACH OK ON SUMS?
I’M not very good at maths so I’m struggling to understand why, if you want inflation down to just 2 per cent a year, you would offer government employees pay rises of between 3.6 and 6 per cent.
Surely, that sort of thing causes inflation to go up?
I must be missing something though because the sums have all been worked out by our Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, who, as we know, was a chess grand master at the age of nine before becoming the governor of the Bank of England at 12.
So I guess she must know what she’s doing.
GAME OF GIVE & TAKE
I DON’T understand a lot of what goes on in Sir Starmer’s well- moisturised head.
And this week, he was more unfathomable than ever.
PAWhy give away sovereign British territory to a foreign power that’s not necessarily friendly?[/caption]
Because he has given away the Chagos Islands, which are ours, to Mauritius.
And we will pay them £101million a year, for 99 years, for us to use the military base there.
It could be argued, I suppose, that it’s silly for us to govern a few specks of land that are thousands of miles away. But they’re not exactly close to Mauritius either.
It gets worse. Because we will only be allowed to use the strategically vital base if the government of Mauritius gives us permission.
Which seems unlikely because, like most of the smaller countries in the world these days, Mauritius can’t even build a park bench without permission from their paymasters in China.
So why’s he done this? Why give away sovereign British territory to a foreign power that’s not necessarily friendly? And what’s next?
Is he going to give the Isle of Wight to North Korea? Or the Shetland Islands to Donald Trump?
If he is in the mood for this kind of thing and plainly he is, maybe he’d like to give Anglesey to me.
I’d even let him continue to use the lighthouse there for the very reasonable sum of just £200million a year.
BAN’S A PUZZLE
SO, an uninsured learner driver called Khizer Ali, who killed a woman and seriously injured her husband in a hit-and-run accident, has been given a jail sentence of 11 years and three months, and a driving ban of 12-and-a- half years.
I can’t work that out. Because he’s been banned from doing something he isn’t qualified to do anyway.
And he’s going to be in jail for most of the time, where, so far as I know, they don’t let inmates drive to the canteen every morning in a nice Ford Fiesta.
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