Two men who forced a boy into a flooded clay pit and watched him drown have been jailed for five-and-a-half years.
Realistically these murderers will be out of jail in two years .

Every day we see court cases coming to very IMO unrealistic sentencing.
Judges seem to have no understanding of mainstream public attitudes, they seem to be more interested in the rights of minorities than the rights of general consensus. The days of the house of Lords I hope are numbered because its where most of these judges come from they are clearly completely out of touch with the way we the 'ordinary' people live. Perhaps as part of their training they need to spend a week on troubled estates through out the country It's time for us, the people, to get a vote for all of our judges and our police chiefs, just as we do our MPs and local councillors dont you think?.

At the same time civil penalties imposed by local authorities seem out of all proportion to the "offence". £70 for parking on a double yellow line or £50 for less "serious" offences? £100 fine for having so much rubbish in your bin that the lid was raised by 4 inches? If the guy concerned had punched the official who fined him he'd probably have got away with a caution!

Whilst government ministers have today asked police to harrass persistant trouble makers probaby due to the fact that ASBO's are clearly not working, the courts have released on bail islamic preacher and self confessed activist Abu Qatada. Oh my, I wonder what he will get up too now he cannot be deported to his country of origin, Jordan, you dont even need three guesses to work it out!Once again a prime example of the judiciary acting like irresponsible school boys, expletives stay with me. Now I wonder how the police will harrass Qatada who in my opinion is in trouble maker class. Why on earth ,in this country cant we send troublemakers packing back to their country of origin?

To answer your question of why, they have no option but to refrain from deporting him to Jordan because it would break UN and European conventions relating to deporting people to countries who torture. Jordan have already all but said they will do just that.

It's a real catch-22 for the government. They want to send him back, they are challenging the appeal court. Meanwhile the court is there to uphold the law. It's what makes us a civilized country. They need to argue that the UN and European conventions are wrong in this case and get it changed. But until they do, justice is being done. The judiciary of this country are not acting like irresponsible school boys, they are working within UN and European convention. Something which is beyond their control. The UK is currently acting correctly. Unfortunately.

I think you would have to redefine the word civilised really eastshrewsbury; would you call the war in Iraq for example civilised? What about etiquette. Long gone are the days of elegance, learning and good manners, only to be replaced in the 21st century by a greedy, push button society, is this civilised ?Britain appears seized by an epidemic of knife crime, I wouldnt have thought this was civilised. My contention is that the claim that Western society is more civilised is an arrogant claim, not borne out by facts, and that it is more correct to say that it is simply a more organised and technologically more advanced society, certainly not civilised. More lightheartedly look at what some travel writers think about the English

I completely agree with you Andy. I don't hold the opinion that Western Society is more civilized. Far from it. And at no point did I say or imply that. You have completely twisted my words :) If you look above, what I said was that we have courts that work to the rule of law. And that is what makes us a civilized society. I didn't make any claims about other countries not being civilized. Nor did I list any other criteria that would make one country more civilized than any other.