Letters - Thursday, January 20, 2022

Would you buy a car from these two?
Boris Johnson and Dominic CummingsBoris Johnson and Dominic Cummings
Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings

“He’s behind you …”

If two blokes like this knocked on your front door and said you needed some roof work doing , would you trust them or pay them up front ?

Millions of people have placed huge trust into Boris and his pantomime cast.

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But their double standards, hypocrisy and culture of cover-up, reeks of insincerity, deceit and arrogance .

The famous drive to Barnard Castle… to “test eyesight” and revelations of lockdown parties at 10 Downing Street have made a mockery of the rules.

This pandemic has affected so many people, with personal and financial losses and sacrifices. It’s an absolute scandal that Boris Johnson has the sheer nerve to insult the public even further and somehow claim he was unaware these ‘bring your own booze’ gatherings may have been in breach of the lockdown rules.

It would seem they both need to undergo a lie detector test or swear on oath in a court of law.

Stephen Pierre

via email

LAW

Rule of Law - or the Mob?

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Regarding the ‘Colston 4’s’ acquittal, I’m with Jim Oldcorn on this (Your Say, January 13). Allowing the Rule of the Mob to take precedence over the Rule of Law is, to my mind, both bonkers and dangerous. It enables those who seem to think that they are ‘justified’ to commit criminal damage because of a ‘cause’ that they believe in to thus escape punishment for their actions.

After all, suppose someone’s ‘cause’ just happened to be that, say, they thought that the properties in which the Colston 4 lived were out of character for the area or were painted a funny colour, so decided to take a bulldozer to the lot of them that, to the Colston 4 jury, could make them think that the actions were justified by the cause.

When I sat on many a jury while doing my duty, I was told always by the judge that I was to consider ‘ONLY the evidence presented in court’, and I wish to stress that phrase, as it may otherwise prejudice the case should anything outside of that court be brought to mind.

To my mind, having a ‘cause’ is NOT evidence and, if such testimony was tried to be presented in court, surely the judge should have dismissed the attempt and should have directed the jury to ignore that testimony?

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Given also that they had been told only to consider the evidence presented to them in court, how come that ‘external factors’ seem to have been brought forward or put into the minds of the jurors?

The Luddites had a ‘cause’ which seemed to justify, in their minds, the wanton destruction of machinery as they saw that it would take away their livelihoods, but they were found guilty. Closer to home, we had fracking protesters standing on the tops of lorries trying to get into the fracking site and so preventing the lorry drivers from carrying out their livelihoods. Surely, no one in their right minds, would prevent someone from earning a living? Oh, I was forgetting, the Insulate Britain and Extinction Rebellion protesters were also doing just that around London and elsewhere and we have all read or heard about the terrible consequences of their actions.

We all have the right to peaceful protest, including withdrawal of labour, almost whatever the cause. What we do not have the right to do is to commit criminal damage/vandalism during our protest. Sorry, scrub that, for a precedence has now been set and will no doubt be quoted in every court up and down the length and breadth of the UK. Thus, gone are the days now that one can make reasonable arguments to be presented to various bodies about things with which one disagrees. Just get the hotheads in and they will sort it with no consequences for their actions.

The proper way, in a civilised society, would have been to have made representations to the authorities to have the statue of Colston removed.

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Doing it mob-handed was NOT the way and can never be justified.

Meanwhile, the Colston 4 should think themselves lucky. Supposing they had tried similar actions with the statues of certain former leaders of, say, Russia, North Korea and China. Hmm, somehow I would also pity the jurors in the courts of those countries who came to similar conclusions as in the case of the Colston 4.

NS

via email

HONOURS

Knighthood query

If it has been easy for the Queen to take away her son Andrew’s titles in response to concerns of senior figures of the Armed Forces, why can’t the same be done to Tony Blair’s dubious ‘knighthood’?

DS Boyes

via email

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