Pensioners who sold battery eggs deserve no sympathy

A retired couple were fined for fraud after buying battery eggs and selling them outside their home as being from their own free-range chickens.

The Dorset couple bought 12,000 eggs and passed them off as free-range after their own free-range chickens stopped laying last year. They deserve no sympathy.

Intensive battery-farmed eggs is a sensitive issue for many consumers. Those who buy free-range eggs usually do so as part of a considered purchase. There are those who believe the quality of the farming is relative to the quality of the product, and will buy free-range as a premium product. Even more common are those who buy free-range for ethical reasons due to the better treatment of chickens.

The couple, Stephen and Anne Hobbs, of Three Legged Cross, Dorset, can consider themselves fortunate they were fined £300 each in addition to £1,178 court costs. Their age should not be relevant to their defence. They misled those who made the sensitive decision to buy free-range eggs and wanted to buy farm fresh products.

Jeremy Forrest latest: Police now wasting police time

It is the story that will not go away. Britain has long had a voyeuristic obsession with paedophiles, which led to the public feeding frenzy that accompanied the revelation of Jimmy Savile's secret predatory life. Since then, the binoculars behind the venetian blinds have been focused towards Jeremy Forrest, the teacher convicted for having sex with a pupil aged 15.

I have long explained that Forrest needed a short but significant custodial sentence to at least cover taking the mystery girl (Lady X) to France. That is an appropriate punishment for the pain he put her family through, and provide a chance to reflect on his actions. I have also long said that the situation was never as straightforward as we thought. Critics still insist that Lady X was 'groomed' despite the premise of grooming being that the 'victim' is not aware they are being manipulated.

It is clear that in light of being fully aware of what grooming and paedophilia amounts to, Lady X still insists that she is in love with Forrest. She aims to marry Forrest and is supported by her father. Forrest has had unprecedented moral support from his own family. I will refrain from making a judgement for, as I already hinted at above, this case is complicated and I simply do not know enough about it.

Sadly, the authorities continue to bring great embarrassment upon themselves over this case. Police are now wasting their own time trawling Twitter to identify who named the mystery girl in defiance of the law, despite her name being as well-known as that of a minor celebrity.

While the stupidity of defying the law is without dispute, this is clearly a waste of police time and resources. Furthermore, if people are going to get in trouble with the law for naming people in defiance of the law, what about the companies that are facilitating it?

On one social media network and at least one search engine, to find out the name of the girl who entered the relationship with Jeremy Forrest is so easy that a five year old could do it, for the websites in question provide cues to make it more efficient for visitors to search for what they are looking for.

This demonstrates that once again the law in the UK is biased against people in favour of firms and corporations. If you are a company, do what you like. If you are a person, feel the full weight of the law.

If the law applies to the people, it should apply to companies too. Don't hold your breath though.

Q&A on Jeremy Forrest's crime - how can it be best understood?

Before today, it was all so simple. A suspected child abuser would take his place in the dock, have the charges read out, then would either plead guilty or watch his defence decimated in court. We then collectively rejoice at the warm feeling of justice being done, putting our pitchforks away for another day. Then along came Jeremy Forrest, who fled to France with his school pupil – Lady X – and plunged how we respond to child abuse cases into confusion once again.

A lot of absolute nonsense has been written in the press and on social media, ranging from complete misplaced sympathy towards Forrest (and Forrest/Lady X as a pair) to sensational ‘paedophile’ headlines. Here, we aim to settle some of the questions surrounding Forrest.

Was it fair that he was sentenced to five and a half years in prison, when serial child molester Stuart Hall received 15 months, with his sentences running concurrently?

It is not fair, but I feel that it says more about the leniency of Hall’s sentence, rather than the stiffness of Forrest’s.

There is no reasonable defence for the actions of Jeremy Forrest. His behaviour was despicable, and by any standard he is a villain. The decision to run off with his 15-year old pupil when the authorities were closing in on him was an act of gross selfishness, which caused immeasurable distress to her mother (more so than any revelation of sexual activity between the pair). Many questions would have been spinning around her head at that time. “Is my daughter safe? Will I ever see her again? Is she even still alive?”

Having been convicted of child abduction on Thursday (20^th June), the only acceptable outcome was a custodial sentence. The maximum sentence for child abduction is 7 years, but around 2 years ought to have been sufficient for an abduction involving a passenger seat rather than the car boot.

He was subsequently charged with five counts of sexual activity with a minor, each of which he pleaded guilty. I predicted the upgrading of the offences would mean the sentence passed would be between 5 and 7 years. In the end he was given 5 and a half years (or just over 4 “Stuart Halls” in pervert currency).

The press are describing Forrest as a ‘paedophile’. Is that harsh?

It depends on how you base your judgement. In the strictest of terms, Forrest is a paedophile. Within the framework of the law, he would be defined as such. If you want it in more domestic terms, consider it from another angle: if an adult gets on a bus with his or her partner, who in turn buys a child’s ticket, should they really be together? How would you feel if your child started dating someone twice their age?

One lady caller to a daytime radio programme told presenter Jeremy Vine that she was uncomfortable with Forrest being described as a paedophile. She did add however that she would be livid if a Jeremy Forrest entered into a relationship with her 14-year old daughter.

Others still see the situation as an unfortunate love story. Many young people took to Twitter to send their support to the “couple” – yes, you read that correctly.

Overall, rather than widespread disgust, the vast majority of posts on my own news feed merely stressed the Forrest/Hall sentencing distinction. I guess many felt that considering how many pupils and teachers there are in Britain, and how much time they spend in the vicinity of each other, this scenario is inevitable from time to time and the difference in sentencing is unjust.

In sum, while there is cause for huge discomfort in this case, I would refrain from using the toolbox of ‘P’ words to describe him, pending further evidence that suggests otherwise.

What other evidence would be needed to confirm that Forrest is unquestionably depraved?

We need to be sure that this case is an unfortunate one-off and not a snapshot of more dedicated and prolific paedophilic behaviour.

No evidence was presented at the trial that he had a stash of child pornography anywhere – the standard way of removing any remaining doubt of the defendant’s guilt in this Internet age.

At present, there is also no evidence that Forrest has abused or assaulted any other children. At least one woman has made a further allegation against Forrest, but so far she has only taken it to a tabloid newspaper rather than the legal authorities. Until she does that, the allegation must be treated with caution.

If any more evidence emerges, things could promptly change.

What is the difference between Jeremy Forrest and Jimmy Savile then? They’ve both exploited young people, after all.

Ultimately, Jeremy Forrest laid everything on the line for a girl. Logic suggests there must have been some love involved, even if it was misplaced. He risked (and lost) his career. He risked (and lost) his marriage. He risked (and lost) his liberty.

In contrast, Jimmy Savile risked nothing. Every predatory manoeuvre was risk-assessed in his paedophilic mind. He targeted the most absolutely vulnerable. He used his TV programmes, his status and his charity veneer to fill his sleazy boots at every turn. His scheming ensured he did not face justice during his lifetime.

The lack of distinction between the Saviles and the Forrests provide a crisis for the otherwise priceless child protection movement. At present, paedophilia is treated as something dichotomous, something that people either are or are not. There is no scale. In the minds of the most dedicated campaigners, Forrest now joins Savile and Hall in the hall of shame. To illustrate this further, the press could not resist the occasional gleeful use of various words beginning with the letter ‘P’ (most of which have already been used above) as adjectives to describe Forrest.

As this article has tried to demonstrate, Jeremy Forrest’s behaviour was unacceptable and apparently predatory, but to join the Premier League of perverts, more evidence against him would be required.

Did the crime warrant the level of coverage it received in the media, then?

Not ordinarily, but the level of public interest when the pair first went missing meant that the trial was also going to receive unprecedented coverage. This again demonstrates the selfishness of Jeremy Forrest’s actions, rather than taking responsibility from day one.

The outcome is a girl has been left in confused and in pieces, while he has received a custodial punishment that went far beyond what he would have received had he not gone through that tunnel.

One day, Lady X will realise that she was dragged to France, dragged through the media, and then dragged through the courts by a man trying to save himself.

Summary

Forrest was a teacher. Lady X was his pupil. He was in a position of responsibility and should have resisted, however tempting she was to him. He was a professional and should have acted as such. When parents send their children to school, they do not expect them to enter a relationship with Sir or Miss.

Both will require care now to ensure that their mental health does not suffer long-term.

Though I resist casting him in the very harshest of terms, it was only right that Forrest was given some time in the slammer to reflect on what he has done.

Britain's favourite bigot uses Nigella incident to hone his comedy act

Most of the British public will by now be familiar with the incident where Nigella Lawson appeared to have the violent hand of her husband Charles Saatchi thrust upon her neck. With that in mind, I will resist posting the photographs again, for I think we have all seen them enough. Needless to say, the "playful tiff" that Saatchi claimed to be enjoying did not look particularly enjoyable for Ms Lawson.

Society responded by trying to interpret the photographs in order to ascertain the level of aggression by Saatchi and to propose its own sanctions. Some pondered why a photographer was happy to snap away at the sparring pair, yet nobody was prepared to step in and help. Others questioned what sort of potential violence may be going on behind closed doors.

However, the real "fun" began when the leader of the British National Party, Nick Griffin, was allowed loose on Twitter. He promptly attracted revulsion by adding sexism to his already extensively bursting suitcase of prejudice by making light of the situation.

He wrote: "If I had the opportunity to squeeze Nigella Lawson, her throat wouldn't be my first choice."

No great mind-reading feat is required in order to unravel what Griffin was driving at. The subject of most discussion of Ms Lawson over the years has been (in all probability) the size of her chest - as opposed to her cooking skills, her well-to-do background or even how she manages to maintain a naturally youthful appearance.

The use of Ms Lawson's body shape for the benefit of humour is probably is not in itself the biggest atrocity in human history. Britain is full of supposedly edgy comedians who love nothing more than to crack a boobs or backside joke. Some of them are even funny, and I love nothing more than a bit of dangerous comedy. I would not fit the definition of politically correct too comfortably, therefore any attempt by Griffin to characterise someone like myself as a humourless PC bore is nonsense.

The problem, however, is that the situation was inappropriate for comedy. The pictures depicted what appeared to be a woman being physically manhandled. If joking about a woman's breasts is not necessarily crossing the line of decency, then joking about the right place to grab an alleged brutalised woman is. The potential of domestic violence is not a suitable platform for a gag.

Whatever I may think of Griffin, he is supposed to be the figurehead of a legitimate political party. Could you imagine David Cameron, Ed Miliband or Nick Clegg thinking it acceptable to go on to Twitter and joke about where best to get hold of Nigella so soon after those photographs appeared?

The simple truth is that there is a time and a place to try and beat Frankie Boyle and Jimmy Carr in the extreme comedy stakes, and joking about Nigella Lawson on Twitter today was not it.