Elfinsafety – Member
Oh Christ; not again??

without dragging that post up again – my point was to highlight disproportionate sentencing. his LENIENT sentence was appalling.

Elfin is right, pure fantasy. Its my cat you should be scared of, not the dog.

Contrary to popular belief sentencing guidelines are fairly strict. To get 6 months he’s likely to have a bucket load of previous convictions. I’m sure community orders are likely to have been tried and failed already.

perhaps he got six months as the judge thought this was a good way to get him off the streets through winter?
elfin – i must say you made me empathise with the chap. i have heard of folk who are serial burglars as a career and having been broken into i have to say i despise those types, however, this guy didnt take the tv or money,etc, as far as I can see and yes in an ideal world it would be good to take him in. not sure I could do it but the poor blokes going to be at risk of death on the streets so hats off to you elfin

didn’t take anything because he thought he had another week before the residents returned?

Reading with interest and hoping for renewed forum rage. If I may make a suggestion though..isn’t it about this time on this thread that the liberal wishy washies accused the ‘hang em all brigade of being Nazi’s / fascists?

Come on lets get all annoyed.

Usually, maybe change is afoot?

do we know anything about his previous which could of course make this greyer than the headline suggests?

There is no such offence as breaking and entering in the UK. You would not get 6 months for that with no previous. From the sounds of it and yes I am assuming here he has a reasonable amount of similar previous, maybe has a drug problem and other aggravating factors. Personally I think it is prob ok. It is horrible having someone break in (or allow themselves in with keys without your permission) still horrible.

Six years ago we were broken into while we were upstairs in bed. My mistake was to leave a window open.

Wife is still upset and I’m similarly scarred. It changed me as a person (for the worse). Put it this way I stopped buying the Guardian.

Social justice and inequality is one thing. Criminality is another.

Probably very boring.

But if we wait about 2 weeks we can get the full decision online. Latest is from December 10th:

http://www.courtsni.gov.uk/en-GB/Judicial+Decisions/

But then that would mean there would be less scope for wild, factless speculation, which would be very un-STW.

Doesn’t a six month sentence mean he’ll be out in three ?
Late March then, just as the weather’s warming up.

…some poor sods have to sleep rough, and there is often little or no care provided for them.

No, but I’d be less happy about turfing the poor sod out into the cold, or ending up in jail actually.

I may be jumping to conclusions here, but…
You are sympathetic towards the homeless, although you don’t invite homeless people in to your home.
If you found a homeless person uninvited in your home, you would let them stay.

Your charity appears to be biased in favour of those who commit crimes.

heh nice one MTQG

Elfinsafety – I take it you live alone, no offspring?

Can I suggest a middle position? I’d like to think, if I came home to find a clean, civil man had moved into my flat, I’d ask the police not to prosecute him. I’d want him removed, and not to come back, but there doesn’t appear to be great harm done. 🙂

I heard he once posted on a forum in block capitals.

I came home to find a clean, civil man had moved into my flat

No doubt using your shower gel and washing powder. How about he takes your bike for a spin too?

Shit, well, if he used my shower gel then only deportation will do. 🙂

As long as I didn’t find a big roll of builder’s DPM in my flat, then fair enough, I’d just want him removed…but I’d ask that he not be prosecuted or if he was, then ask that he be given a community order or some such.

I’d ask they throw the book at him, but that’s my kind heartedness 🙂

He appeared in court within a day of being charged, did not ask for bail and pleaded guilty and did not ask to adjourn for pre-sentence reports to consider a community based sentence. The judge did not bail pending appeal as he has no bail address. All this means the man effectively asked to be jailed.The only issue is length the judge has given him the maximum available in the lower court of 6 months knowing he will serve half i.e. 3 months. Save for the actual length of the jail term this could not have happened in this way without his consent.

He will be out in march at the latest.
He has been tucked up somewhere warm and safe with sufficient resources to do time to try to solve some of his accommodation needs. .

I doubt very much he has any drug problems if he had he would have nicked and sold the TV.

Well said crankboy

Explaining a complicated situation in clear, concise and understandable language without provoking emotive assumptions.

You’ll never be a journalist, crankboy.

“You’ll never be a journalist, crankboy.”
The inability to type or spell also features in that equation .
my original post should have read:-

“He has been tucked up somewhere warm and safe with sufficient resources AND time to try to solve some of his accommodation needs”

…this means the man effectively asked to be jailed…..this could not have happened in this way without his consent.

So yet another example of the law putting the interests of a criminal first then. And I bet they wouldn’t have been so obliging if he had been a British national. Oh no, in politically correct soft-touch Britain a foreign criminal gets everything he asks for.

It makes me sick. Lazy foreigners come over here, they live on our generous unemployment benefits, take our jobs, and now the cheeky feckers are demanding that we house them in our prisons. No wonder the country is in such a mess.

Dump him in a big open space somewhere. And throw away the keys.

ernie for PM!

To be fair I’d be seriously unhappy if I found someone in my house when I returned, but if he seemed a genuine person, had not left the place a tip and hadn’t stolen anything bar a bit of food from the fridge and was genuinely doing it just to survive I couldn’t really complain too much. But if he then refused to leave/give the keys back etc I’d have no qualms in having him hiked off to jail. The fact that he stole the keys beforehand tells me he’s possibly a tad more scary than I’d be happy with and the owner should really have better key control.

Crankboy .. they don’t nick TV’s any more too big! more small electrical goods. Sorry!

Munqe-chick – Member “they don’t nick TV’s any more too big! more small electrical goods. Sorry! ”

Round here they do and if the TV is too big they get a local private hire firm to drive them to cash converters.

Your charity appears to be biased in favour of those who commit crimes.

Nope you are wrong and jumping to conclusions. I am charitable to those who are in need of help and support.

Elfinsafety – I take it you live alone, no offspring?

Yes, and I can see that some folk might consider this a factor in my own position here. I concede that if I had a family with children, that I might need to seek a different solution than my earlier hypothetical suggestion.

Notice that in my original post, I said the 6-month jail sentence seemed harsh. This was based on what little information I had access to regarding this particular case, coupled with my own views and philosophies. It may well be that the bloke’s an utter scumbayg, but I’m not going to jump to conclusions based on such little information.

Of course, depending on your own perspective/prejudices, this can be read as either:

Unfortunate man who’s lost his job and is homeless resorts to crime,

or

Nasty evil criminal scumbayg is hell-bent on depriving decent hard-working law-abiding folk of their own home.

Or something in between.

Crankboy fair enough but flipping heck how behind the times are they 😉 Where I work I haven’t heard of a nicked TV in about 5 years!!!!

Not worth nicking TVs. Nowt worth watching on them anyway….

LOL @ Elfinsafety Oh so true, I think I watch about 1 programme a week and that’s probably the 6 o’clock news.

Elfinsafety, it’s not just you, several other people have said they would do similar.

Maybe it’s the immediacy and personal involvement of having the homeless person right in front of you, rather than the anonymity of a charity appealing on behalf of homeless people, that alters peoples attitudes.
By not taking in a homeless person who asks for help, but allowing a homeless person who has illegally entered your house to stay, you are encouraging crime.

You may not see it that way, but I suspect the judge did.

I’ve always thought it would be more practical to use prison as a way to protect the public, rather than as a punishment for criminals. That means dangerous drivers would get long stretches wheras someone who inherited a little early would not. By that logic, putting this guy away ’til spring is just about right.