(Naturally we had an extended lunch break)
My Girl was gorgeous and brave and articulate. She had a tiny waist. Her character witnesses were articulate and some of them were posh (Queen Victoria's great, great, great granddaughter). All testified to her pathological honesty and gentleness.
Three officers gave evidence. This consisted of describing their fears of the "angry mob", the like of which they had never encountered in 18 years of policing demonstrations. Only one of them had seen Calfy, one of two "evidence gatherer's" or professional police witnesses as I prefer to call them. He couldn't say that he had seen her do anything frightening. They showed some footage of her not being scary or aggressive and the crowd being lively but not attempting to penetrate police lines (they didn't try). They showed footage of her insisting to fellow demonstrators that the protest was peaceful (a response to stuff being thrown at the police).
She has yet to be sentenced, probably community service and a tag, screwing up more of her choices, both immediate and for life in general. Now she is convicted of a violent crime it is unlikely she will ever get to work with children, a particular gift she has.
To find her guilty the magistrates had to be convinced that she had lied to them under oath. I am still spinning in disbelief.
Her post on it is here
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45 comments:
Any chance of an appeal? It sounds like an utter travesty. The magistrate was obviously deciding what to have for dinner, and wasn't paying attention. Is it fattist to say that?
My thought exactly, an appeal. Bloody magistrates, half of them should be put down as a service to the public and the other half should be put down as a service to the public.
How much easier it is for the police to go for gentle, harmless people than for villains who might well have a sawn-off shotgun down their trousers?
Bastards.
I think it's a bit unnecessary to be rude about the magistrate's appearance, mullah xxxx
It looks like the other two are also in that photo
Must appeal Lils!
Absolute disgrace to waste so much time on a piddling case like this (no offence Calfy, on the magnitude of the case, but I feel they should be looking to bang up bad people, not you).
Plod afraid of 'a mob'...
Body armour?
Night sticks?
Bloody great crash helmets?
Pah!
Bet Elecs has something to say about this...
Don't worry about not being able to work with kids either, in a few years time, you'll need a record of violence to walk into any school and out again without a broken head...
We will appeal. Absolutely. This is so WRONG.
When the prosecuting barrister said that she'd put her case and that was it, Calfy's father and I just looked at each other and raised our eyebrows spontaneously..ie. they didn't seem to have produced any evidence that My Girl was guilty of a Section 4 Public Order offence. Then followed Calfy's evidence and her splendid character references. My Girl has huge integrity if she's a bit scatty. Guileless. Trustworthy. Thoroughly honest and deeply intelligent. These are the kinds of things the adults who have run into my girl were saying about her under oath. She then demonstrated her faultless honesty by offering to the prosecution that she called a policeman a bastard when she saw him smash the hand of a girl who was holding the wapping box with an aluminium night stick. My Girl almost never swears, (the first time was when she heard Arnold Schwarzenegger had become Governor of California): she suffers my filthy mouth.
Anyway, to find her guilty the magistrates had to believe Calfy was lying in her evidence. Which is so wrong.
I think I may be a bit fattist Fuchsia. Which is rich, as I am at least a stone overweight.
Calfy, you have to admit, the pic is a good likeness, except for the hair. And you are right about the other women!
Don't forget snipers, horses and tazers, Scrobs! They showed all the footage they had of My Girl. I can't say it shows her criminal intent.
Apart from the weight issue, was the magistrate also, umm, black, as per your photograph?
I am not a racist, but I wish to be informed before I mention something which might seem old-fashioned.
I tried to explain this all to lady idle just now but have to admit that I have forgotten the exact details of the demonstration that has caused all this worry and waste of public funds. It was something to do with our liberty, and the government's taking of it, I think. But what, exactly?
I met calfy in the company of the Tuscan, OH, E-K, the Beast and 45 Govt. Any sane young woman would have demonstrated against us, addled unattractive and sozzled folk that we were, but she was a picture of grace and equanimity. I'd be happy to tell Oprah this if she gets the gig on the appeal trial as well.
If only you had the forsight to turn up at court armed with KFC and a watermelon as a bribe.
PS
I agree with your lover( Dennis)
APPEAL
How much did you pay your lawyer ???
Beast. By fuckery that was funny !
Sorry Calfy and Lilith. I shouldn't be laughing here.
Of men born in 1953 more than a third have a criminal record, that is for conviction on indictable offences. The figures from the 'sixties and 'seventies must be considerably higher -just consider all the weed convictions- and it would appear that infants are now ammassing substantial criminal records.
A record of this type, whilst undesireable and infuriating is niot the end of the world.
This is at the very lowest end of violent offences and a non-custodial disposal or less, maybe a binding-over or some form of discharge may not result in exclusion from employment opportunities, she must co-operate in the pre-sentence report process and not wise-ass.
Appeal, however, will lengthen the process for all concerned and invite further disappointment. It is easier to win an appeal from a magistrates' court to a crown court than from a crown court to the appeal court but Judges are notoriously, almost constitutiuonally, unwilling to reject the testimony of police, doctors, other lawyers or any other group of state-subsidised bastards
A crescendo always arises, as it has here; if your daughter, however, was in an assembly which could be perceived to have been threatening Her Majesty's peace, or the safety and wellbeing of Her Majesty's constables it is likley that her presence will be enough to secure and uphold a conviction.
On your telling of it her participation was peaceful and non-confrontational, a legitimate protest, and she has good prospects and no form. She and you, especially, should stress this with the officer preparing the report, together with her regret and remorse. You re in no position to criticise the court's decision, you must persuade them that leniency is not only appropriate in all the circumstances but in the wider interests of justice. Don't tell them I said that.
Lilith - why don't you consider just going back to NZ while the airport is still open? Life is still so much nicer there!
Sorry, that is slightly unclear - I meant all of you of course!
Yes Idle, apart from the hair style the pic is a dead ringer. The protest was multi-agency as the authorities like to say...civil liberties and stop the war.
Beast, you are a Beast :-)
(Dennis is Bunty's lover, not mine. She tells me he is hot)
£12k so far, Kev :-(
Stan that is a shocking statistic. One in 3 blokes of that age are unemployed too, or so I hear, but that probably has nothing to do with their criminal record.
The probation officer was sympathetic, but we are looking at 100 hours community service and six months tag...I don't know how they reckon that is non-custodial. For a peripatetic girl like mine that will be the equivalent of open prison.
We will appeal because it is so clearly unproven.
Nomad, you are so right. My mother said to me yesterday that she should have gone three years ago when my brother advised her to. Now she can't sell her house and by the time she can the government will tax the proceeds at 60% if she tries to leave the country with them....
It is very difficult. I have emigrated twice, once here and then once to Spain (which only lasted three years) but for my sins I am an Anglophile. People in New Zealand are wholesome and look you in the eye when they are talking to you...it is most disturbing.
Quelle domage. Have commented suitably at chez Barton Barton.
In the West Country 9-14 April if youze aboot.
Anti 42 day detention rule, organised by Stop The War coalition to coincide with Bush's visit to the UK and more troops deployed to Afghanistan. All sorts of protestors there though- Guantanomo Bay, Stop funding Ethiopian warlords' massacre of the Somalians, etc.
We are most certainly about TT. It would be fantastic to see you.
I'm just catching up with my regular blog reads and I'm horrified with this.
I'm beginning to wonder who the British Police believe they are protecting any more.
That's a very good question Lakes. "Themselves" seems to have been the consensus of the prosecution witnesses.
Lilith
I am very sorry if I have exposed your clandestine relationship with Dennis, a man who keeps a "sawn off" down his pants.
A condition brought about due to my having wired the Scotton Pinkney Church community centre lavatories to the main electricity supply.
A "flash in the pan" that had far reaching consequences for the man I now call "Dad"
It seems to me to be against the natural order of things that a spirited young English girl of impeccable schooling and grace should be judged by a humpback whale.
I just watched Sir David Attenborough telling us all about the six-month long fast endured by these creatures before they go on a super-size-me spree which involves eating a ton of herring a day for weeks on end.
Call me a traditionalist, but I prefer my magistrates to eat three modest meals a day and maintain an intellectual equlibrium, rather than reeking of kippers for a small part of the year, whilst being famished for the rest of it.
Retrial!
Beast - I will deal with you when you get home from school.
Idle - that is v. funny.
Lilith - £12K, a bloody disgrace. More lampposts, please.
Lils I am so sorry to read all of this, poor Kalfy, poor you, what an ordeal.
You are most right to appeal.
This is a terrible, my heart goes out to you all.
Di.xx
Lilith? Please tell me you are not intimate with my lovely Dennis? I have taken his association with that strumpet Bella in my stride, but you? Please let it be vicious lies.
Buzz x
Bunty, Lilith is -I quote- the "feminine dark side of the divine, the seductress, the succubus".
Bunty, you know I love Elby. The Beast is a frightful gossip.
Calfy, that sounds about right :-)
Trubes, it is a total downer :-(
Dennis, give him a clip round the ear from me, would you? Agreed on Idle's witty observations.
R was asking me what a succubus was the other day. Little did I think to use my own mother as an example.
Lilith is a sub-personality, Calfy as well you know. We all have our inner succubus... Are you going to write The Lost Parents, a kind of Myerson Misery Memoir from the point of view of the teenager?
George Plimpton wrote the finest book about boxing, or indeed of any sport, called Shadow Box, which dealt at length with the Rumble in the Jungle. He was convinced that George Foreman, the nailed-on favourite, was got at by a succubus, in the form of a Congolese dancer, who Foreman saw quite a lot of in the month leading up to the delayed fight.
Idle that is malicious speculation.
Mr foreman spent the month prior to his "Rumble in the jungle" designing and patenting his famous grill,thereby falling behind with his training.
That is the only reason that he lost.
Ha ha ha Beast. Succubi (?) have an unfortunate rep.
I blame the parents
So do I Mr Holborn. It was me that told her to give a fake identity and her father who failed to turn up to the demo...
Me too, OH
I took one of my 15 year olds to my latest demo.
Dressed from head to toe in a Burqa
What fun
(We had no id on us, she had £20 for a cab in her bra in case I was carted off by the filth)
Be very proud. If I was Anne Franks dad, I would have bought her a drum kit.
Idle said
"I met calfy in the company of the Tuscan, OH, E-K, the Beast and 45 Govt. Any sane young woman would have demonstrated against us, addled unattractive and sozzled folk that we were, but she was a picture of grace and equanimity."
To be fair, she was sat on TT's lap, cackling like a banshee, scoffing our meat leftovers and dry bread and finishing drinks from abandoned tables whilst the Beast explained how his ladyboy girlfriend can both smoke cigarettes AND eject ping pong balls at the same time. 45 Govt was asleep, EK was sipping Kumquat liquor and Idle was adjusting his corduroys.
All I remember is throwing £60 in cash on the filthy table and waking up in Norwich. I don't live anywhere near Norwich.
Happy days
My, my, Mr Holborn, and to think E-K fixed the trains so that I could not chaperone the poor child...
I missed your post...splendid! One of your fifteen year olds? How many do you have?
No one should wake up in Norwich... :-(
And I burst with pride OH, as you must too! Burkas all round!
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