Anna Smith - News Columnist - Mirror.co.uk

Kick out this stupid, bungling judge

2009-03-01T03:06:31Z

If ever there was a judge not fit for office it is Roger Craik QC.

And if the Law Lords want to maintain a shred of confidence in the sorry sham that passes for our justice system, they should kick him out.

His handling of the murder trial in the case of tragic pensioner Dolina MacLean bordered on the criminally incompetent.

It not only makes a mockery of the legal system, but it leaves the grieving family with a sickening sense of injustice they will take to their graves.

And it has appalled the whole country that killer John Lawson, will serve just a few years in jail.

You could take a half-wit, stick him in a judge’s robes, stack the evidence against Lawson in front of him, and they would come to no conclusion other than murder.

I have sat through more murder trials than I care to remember, and the case of 87-year-old Dolina is the most disturbing I have seen.

Lawson, 48, who was kicked out of the Foreign Legion for being a drunk, was found guilty only of culpable homicide at Perth High Court.

Dolina was frail but independent and able to go shopping. The kind of woman this country was built on.
Last May, Lawson targeted Dolina as she got into her Vauxhall Astra at Perth Tesco.

He ordered her to drive into the country before forcing her up a path to a wood where, he said, she collapsed and died. He hid her body and returned six days later to bury it “like a dog�? in a remote forest near Dunning, where he had worked planting trees.

He planted a tree on top of her body so she wouldn’t be found.

The scum was heard giggling about the gruesome burial with another jail inmate while awaiting trial.

By the time Dolina’s body was discovered she was so badly decomposed the cause of death could not be firmly established. So we’ll never know if he strangled or beat her.

The statute-book definition of murder is if a killer behaves with wicked recklessness as to the consequences of his actions.

So please, in the interests of justice, someone has to explain how Roger Craik can direct a jury to return a culpable homicide verdict, after accepting defence QC Gordon Jackson’s argument that there was not enough evidence for murder. How much do we need?

What did Lawson think would happen to an old, unconscious woman of 87 if he abandoned her in a wood? Isn’t that wicked recklessness?

To his credit, prosecutor Derek Ogg QC refused to back down and pursued the murder charge. But the jury bowed to the judge.

I’m wondering what planet they’re on too.

So what on earth made temporary judge Roger Craik QC direct the jury to drop the murder charge?

This debacle comes just a week after Sheriff Craik ordered a rape victim to be locked in cells overnight after she buckled and fled the witness box under cross-examination as she accused an uncle who had sexually abused her as a child.

There are people losing their jobs who are committed, loyal and capable. Yet there are people like Sheriff Craik who exist outside the real world on bloated pay and keep their jobs.

Scotland’s most senior judge, who is investigating Roger Craik, can only work with the evidence. How much more evidence of incompetence does he need?

Stunner for 10

2009-03-01T03:04:24Z

Doesn't the bullying mob of Neanderthals attacking University Challenge brainbox Gail Trimble speak volumes on society’s crumbling values?

The Oxford student’s crime is to be well read, dignified and committed to a career in a world that rewards vulgarity, worships fools and panders to the lowest common denominator.

Set Prezza on Fred the Shred!

2009-03-01T03:03:02Z

If Fred “The Shred�? doesn’t hand his £693,000-a-year pension back, why bother with the formalities of the courtroom?

It’s quicker to send old enforcer John Prescott round to his house to kick his door in like the repo man.

Slap of the week - Angelina Jolie

2009-03-01T03:00:48Z

This week’s dry slap goes to Angelina Jolie.

No I’m not bitter.

But asked about her priorities in life, this was her up-your-bottom reply: “I say kids first, woman to Brad and then my work internationally; and try to educate myself and learn about the world and do some good things while I’m alive.�?

Oh to be so busy.

Oscars fright

2009-03-01T02:53:26Z

I'm not being bitchy, and I know that even at 74 timeless beauty Sophia Loren is still one of the sexiest women who ever lived.

But in that frilly frock at the Oscars, she reminded me of those naff dolls you pull over a toilet roll.

Without a care

2009-03-01T02:52:12Z

Shame on Stirling councillors for voting to shut two old folk’s homes to save cash.

They’ve spent more paying account advisers than the £250,000 they say will be saved by turfing 40 old people from the homes some have lived in for 20 years.

I’m all for the policy of looking after older people in their own houses, but you’d think they would spare a thought for folk in their 90s before uprooting them from the only place they regard as home.

AND finally…

2009-03-01T02:50:55Z

IT’S goodbye from me!

That was my final rant on this page.

It’s been a blast, jousting with readers who are even more outspoken than me!

So thanks for your support – even if we didn’t always agree. I learned a lot.

A villain? Jailed father is a hero!

2009-02-22T03:29:15Z

It's a pity there aren't more men like young dad-of-three Peter Drummond.

He is behind bars for having the backbone to do what most of us would love to do if we had the guts.

He barged into the home of the scumbucket heroin dealer who was supplying a member of his family and flushed his smack haul down the toilet.

We should be on our feet applauding his courage. And if we had any sense of justice, we'd be on the streets protesting and demanding his immediate release.

I don't care if he is no angel and was a bit drunk when he took the law into his own hands.

I don't care if he didn't stop to think as he waded into the junkie den and threatened to kill dealer John Nellies if he kept supplying his brother-in-law.

Because this is a man who has stepped forward and stood up for the rest of us.

He has said enough is enough, and spoken up for communities who believe nobody in authority is doing anything to help as their lives are torn apart by drugs.

Drummond has summed up the raging frustration of the whole country. And for this, he gets two months in jail for breach of the peace.

Sentenced by a sheriff so far removed from the real world he has no concept of what it is like to pray that whatever happens to your kids, they don't end up junkies.

Drummond's jailing is an outrage and makes a mockery of our so-called justice system. Sentencing Drummond to two months Sheriff Robert McCreadie told him: 'If you were concerned about matters you should contact the police, not enter a house and threaten to kill someone. You can't take matters into your own hands the way you did.'

What planet is this sheriff on? Drummond had pleaded with the dealers for months to stop supplying his sister's husband. He has been failed by the system on every level.

This is a guy bringing up three children under five. He is the full-time carer of his wife, who has severe depression because their baby died.

This is a guy raised in Blairgowrie in Perthshire - hardly a seething metropolis - a once close-knit community where you could leave your front door open and your children were safe in the streets.

But like so many neighbourhoods, drugs have consumed their lives. Most people can only hope it doesn't come to their doorstep. But when it does, they rely on the authorities.

So tell me this. Why can't the police do something about a known drugs den? Why was it left to Drummond to go in and flush the heroin down the toilet?

His 'crime' was reported to police by a junkie who had gone to the house to buy smack. It's the junkie who should have been arrested. And why, when this sorry case landed on the desk of the procurator fiscal, did they prosecute it?

Everyone involved should feel ashamed. They have robbed three kids of a father for two months. They have let a community down. And they have fanned the flames of frustration the rest of us feel. The Appeal Court should overturn this decision now.

And everyone involved should get a stiff warning to wise up to the real world.

Slap of the week - Greg Wallace

2009-02-22T03:27:27Z

This week's dry slap goes to Masterchef's baldy boot boy Gregg Wallace.

Thinking woman's crumpet?

Gregg, 44, says girls as young as 21 are falling for him.

Excuse me while I upchuck my lunch.

He's about as sexy as the back end of a pig on a spit... and not nearly as charming.

Bin Abu Qatada for good

2009-02-22T03:24:33Z

The quicker we stick Osama bin Ladenís right-hand man, hate-filled cleric Abu Qatada, on a plane to Jordan the better.

His bid to stay here while he preaches his vile message has already cost the taxpayer a fortune.

Does anyone give a monkey's if he gets tortured in Jordan?

Jade's a battler

2009-02-22T03:20:49Z

It's sad watching the end of Jade Goody's short life being played out in public.

I have always thought her obsessive quest for fame was grotesque, but I have to respect her guts for milking it right to the end.

It really is a story of our times.

The adulation she craved has come too late for her.

But it's not too late for the little boys she adores, who will grow up proud that she fought to the end to make sure they would have everything she never had.

John Suchet's courage

2009-02-22T03:16:33Z

John Suchet's moving TV interview about his tragic wife Bonnie, who has Alzheimer's, was uncomfortable viewing.

But good on him for doing it.

His tears sum up the struggle of so many people, barely coping when a loved one is stolen by this cruel disease.

Britain has been broken by vitriolic lowlifes such as the wrathful Jeremy Clarkson-lovers

2009-02-15T04:11:11Z

I suppose I should thank the masses who spewed their bile at me last week after I ripped into Jeremy Clarkson over his sick jibe at Gordon Brown.

I said Clarkson was a “no talent, snooty tosser, and the posh equivalent of a knuckle-trailing English football
thug�?. Just in case you missed it.

Well, well. My comments unleashed the wrath of the nation’s Clarkson-lovers, and gave a frightening insight into the depths of resentment out there.

Judging by the poison of the braying mob, Clarkson was just about right when he described some of the people who turn up at his shows as “apes�?. No. That would be unfair to apes.

Tell you what though. When the ashes of this country are being trampled through in years to come, and we try to figure out how it came to this, we can look no further than the bigots and lowlifes who were so ill-equipped to take part in intelligent debate that all they could do was post nasty insults online, not just to me, but the Scottish people as a whole.

Because if Britain is broken, then it has been broken by people like them.

Comments like “tartan tosser�? and “get a crack pipe and stab your way through life like the rest of the people in Glasgow�? are just an example of the vitriol.

With a few intelligent exceptions, most of the people who wrote in support of Clarkson were the very people that the privileged bighead would cross the street to avoid.

Yet they think it’s funny and acceptable for him to hurl cruel jibes at someone who battled through his early life after losing the sight of one eye and who happens to be our Prime Minister.

Let’s get this into perspective here.

I think Jeremy Clarkson can be quite witty and droll, but there’s a snootiness about his humour. All of his quips are at the expense of others, and not in a funny way. It’s just mean-spirited.

Now whether you like Gordon Brown or not, and whether you think he is a good Prime Minister or not doesn’t really come into it. He is a world leader, and Clarkson called him a one-eyed, Scottish idiot.

Twenty years ago, a celebrity just wouldn’t have got away with saying that. There would have been a
public backlash.

But there is no respect any more. No manners. Nothing. It’s all gone down the pan.

If you’re a celebrity these days, the more badly behaved you are the more popular you are. Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand are still being applauded.

There’s a whole generation out there who think nothing of insulting people, whether they are old, disabled or less privileged. Their heroes are football stars, rock stars or showbiz celebs. And celebrity is more important than integrity, achievement or humility.

And my rant on Clarkson exposed a terrifying insight into just how much society is crumbling.

I really despair for the future if some of these people – who posted what can only be described as hate mail on the website – have actually bred, and have instilled their shameless values on their offspring.

It will be a sorry day if they are all that Britain has to offer.

Mickey Rourke getting knocked back by Abi Titmuss...

2009-02-15T04:07:44Z

Melted Mickey Rourke sure has had some lowpoints in his life.

But a knockback from Abi Titsout must be down there with the worst of them.

Abi claims hellraiser Mickey wanted to take her back and show her his gong, but says she’s not “all boobs and no brain�?.

Oh really? I guess Mickey just couldn’t see past her Baftas.

Jennifer Aniston: In the Pitts of despair

2009-02-15T04:02:22Z

On her big four-O, Jennifer Aniston says breaking up with Brad Pitt was the most painful experience of her life.
Know what you mean, pet. I’d have been the same myself.