LIVE24SEVEN // Business THOUGHT S FOR MAY 2 0 1 7 Digby Lord
It's two o'clock in the morning. Kenneth Hugill, an 83-year-old farmer in Wilberfoss, East Yorkshire, whose isolated farm has been plagued by crime, wakes up and hears a car nearby.
He gets up, looks out and sees a vehi- cle approaching without its lights on. Leaving his 78-year-old wife Sheila in bed, "straight up, the brave little fella, without a morsel of fear....." doesn't take " 'is stick with 'is 'orse's 'ead 'andle" (with apologies to Stanley Holloway) but his shotgun and he goes outside.
The car revs its engine and speeds towards him. In Ken's own words: "I pulled the trigger because I thought the car was going to kill me." This from an old man who has had two hip replacements and a heart by-pass operation!
The car was being driven by 44-year-old Richard Stables, a convicted burglar on a rural crime watchlist. He said he had driven the Land Rover on to the farm after getting lost during a night out with his mate Adrian Baron who was also in the car. He said he was planning to go hunting by lamplight with a lurcher.
Ken shot at the Land Rover and hit Mr Stables!
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Mr Baron took Mr Stables to hospital where the latter gave medical staff three different explanations for how he had been shot.
And, Dear Reader, guess what happened next? Yes, you've guessed it; Kenneth Hugill was charged and stood trial for causing grievous bodily harm, which upon conviction carries a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison!
Sixteen worrying months and £30,000 worth of legal bills later, the Hull Crown Court jury took just 24 minutes to find 83-year-old Public Enemy Number One not guilty and free to leave and go back to living with Sheila on their Yorkshire farm.
Gerry Wareham, Chief Crown Prosecutor for Yorkshire & Humberside, (whose wages remember are paid for by thee and me of course, as are those of all the Court officials and the Judge) said that he was satisfied that there had been sufficient evidence to warrant bringing the case to court and that "it was in the public interest to do so. The jury has now returned their verdict and…" wait for it! "…we respect their decision"!
Armed thug, 83-year-old Ken Hugill said he was very pleased with the jury's verdict. "I thought I should not have been prosecuted right from the start. I don't shock easily. I didn't feel it was justified."
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David Moyes, the Manager of Premiership Football Club Sunderland and erstwhile boss at Everton and Manchester United, said a while ago to a female BBC reporter after a particularly testy, "in your face" post-match interview: "You were just getting a wee bit naughty at the end there, so just watch yourself. You still might get a slap, even though you're a woman."
The Manager realised almost at once that his comments were out of order, sincerely and personally apologised to the journalist and moved on. The female journalist gracefully accepted the apology and moved on. End of story. Ah! Not quite Dear Reader. A video of the clumsy post-interview remarks, made under stress, was "leaked" to The Daily Star and ......... wham!
Calls for the Manager to be sacked (as if being Manager of the Premiership's bottom club didn't lay him open to those every day anyway!) were moderate by way of the reaction by the mob on social media. He evidently needed to be "re-educated" and he has been "forever tarnished". Politicians and "social commentators" think Moyes is beyond the pale and one branded him "a misogynist". Labour MP Stella Creasy used twitter to assert that tolerating Moyes' words would "normalise violence towards women".
The feeding frenzy on social media was disgraceful and there was a real prospect that David Moyes might be fired over this. Thankfully the Sunderland Board held firm and supported their contrite Manager, but the whole episode is evidence that, as Matthew Syed put it so well in The Times, "natural justice - that precious value - is under severe threat in the social media age. This is dangerous not just for football, but for all of us." .................................................................................................................................................................................
Modern, radical feminism went berserk and took to the 21st century equivalent of the ducking stool, the stocks and the pillory all rolled into one – Social Media – to castigate a female judge who opined that, whilst in no way excusing the actions of men taking advantage of the situation, women who walk down high streets late at night completely slammed out of their brains are puting themselves at risk of attack, sexual or otherwise.
Germaine Greer, that well-known misogynistic and reactionary sexist, when referring to the authenticity of transgender women, said that dressing up and behaving as a woman no more made a man a woman than nailing a pair of long floppy ears to her head made her a "f**king cocker spaniel"! Dear Reader, you can let your imagination run riot on what was the Twitter
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