I’m not sure whether I’m more, or less disturbed by the complaint-provoking reasoning of Cherie Booth QC, in suspending the custodial sentence of a violent offender because he is “a religious man” who knows it was the wrong thing to do – because that’s not so much discrimination as privilege (‘positive’ discrimination?); it only becomes discriminatory if, at some point, she were to convict, for ruffling some antisocial youth’s hair under his hoody, an atheist, on the grounds that such a heathen couldn’t possibly possess any moral guidance code, and so ought to be banged up in order to protect society – than by something else she said:
“You caused a mild fracture to the jaw of a member of the public standing in a queue at Lloyds Bank. You are a religious man and you know this is not acceptable behaviour.”
“ Mild fracture”? Mild?! What, so the victim’s jaw would need to be hanging off for it to be really serious enough to imprison someone who might have avoided queuing if he could have brought himself to leave the mosque a bit earlier?!
I’m reminded somewhat of the BCA, over-reacting like some big mardy bully because it couldn’t bear to be dissed in public. But it seems the law can be sympathetic to such types: Justice Edict ruled in favour of the BCA; Cherie exempts an over-macho ego, seemingly with a “Tut tut”, a wry smile and a shake of the head. Well, boys will be boys, eh.
He broke the guy’s jaw, you Q ueen’s C retin!
Lee Turnpenny 
This was a contentious issue – there’s an interesting post about it on the Cubik’s Rube blog which cites the views of legal ace @jackofkent, who had been tweeting about it.
P.S. It’s Eady, not Eadit.
Thanks, Stephen. I’m also not convinced a cry of ‘discrimination’ is entirely warranted. What puzzled me was the grading of the severity of the particular injury, which I wouldn’t think of as mitigating.
(By the way, I jokingly used Edict; perhaps should have put in inverted commas.)
Ha- you’ll notice I didn’t even read what you wrote properly! Edict I think I would have twigged if I could read.
Judge Edict – I like it. The “E” in “E-dict” also hints at Sir David E’s tendency to allow claims of appropriate UK legal jurisdiction in defamation suits even when something is only UK-available via people being able to read, or order, it over the internet. And even if it is in Ukranian.
Talking of Learned Justices, an amusing name-related factoid is that the ones who ruled to send the BCA v Simon Singh case back to the full Court of Appeal, and to overturn the Trafigura super-injunction, were (respectively) Lords Laws and Judge.
As for Cherie B QC.. If she and her husband had been clearer about their shared rather smug religiosity, something that one now suspects underpinned all TB’s sententious moralising, I do wonder if he would have ever made it to the leadership of the Labour Party, and thence to No 10.
Cheers, Austin. Book-banning, eh? Now, with what term might we label such activities…? And don’t get me started on ‘A-Tone-ment’ Blair.