The Reader: Attack on paramedic shows privileged get slap on wrist in court

Andrew Meads’s attack on Craig Cassidy, a hardworking, underpaid and overworked paramedic [“MoJ adviser is spared jail after drunken attack on paramedic”, January 19], was apparently due to stress and his spending the evening “catching up with old friends at the Oxford and Cambridge Club’s Christmas party”.

He was charged with the new crime of “attacking an emergency worker”, brought in last November to give tougher sentencing powers when paramedics and other emergence service personnel are assaulted.

Yet he received nothing more than a slap on the wrist. In his mitigation, he stated half a dozen times how “stressful” his job as a Ministry of Justice adviser is. The words “heat” and “kitchen” spring to mind.

If he was a bricklayer who pleaded that he was under “stress” after his beloved football team had lost at home and consoled himself with “old friends” where the alcohol flowed freely, I wonder whether it would have held any truck with the presiding magistrate. I think not.

The slap on the wrist continues if you have an educated background.
Anthony Kennedy

I wonder if Meads’s “stressful” job includes being assaulted by drunken idiots while trying to perform his duties?
Paul Thomas

EDITOR'S REPLY

Dear Anthony and Paul,

Community service is not a “slap on the wrist”, it is one step below a prison term, and Meads’s sentence is in line with those handed out to others for similar crimes.

That legislation has created a new crime to mark despicable assaults on emergency workers is a good thing. However, short prison terms should be reserved for cases where there is no other option but custody.

A defendant with a serious drinking problem, for example, would be denied access to an alcohol treatment programme if jailed but could get on to that through a community order punishment.

While it’s tempting to say people like Meads should go to prison en masse, would that serve a purpose?

Additionally, Meads perhaps unwisely mentioned the “stress” of his job at a time when he was representing himself. By sentencing, his newly appointed lawyer had abandoned that line of argument and rightly placed the blame on his alcohol consumption.

Tristan Kirk, Courts Correspondent

It’s not black and white: Penzance Magpie is hungry, not evil

Further to Lotte Jeffs’s piece on the character of the Penzance magpie [“Suffer the pecks of an evil magpie,” January 21], when humans take in one of the most intelligent species of bird, they gain the bird’s trust.

Upon release, the bird will assume that humans are not to be feared and are a source of food. This loss of fear, a natural defence mechanism, has now had the result of Lucky the magpie thinking all users of the park are there to provide food.

Magpies are not evil or malicious. No animal is. This is a case of people assigning human emotions to a creature just trying to survive.

If you want to help an injured wild bird of any type take it to a wildlife hospital. Rearing the magpie by hand, however well-intentioned, could be signing its death warrant.

Magpies are amazing, fascinating creatures. Perhaps one day the old wives’ tales and demonising of this lovely bird will end.
Steve Hanscomb

Unite Ireland and dump the DUP

Does anyone dare to talk about the elephant in the room [“No! No! No! May told Plan B for Brexit is off table”, January 21]? As Theresa May struggles with the Northern Ireland backstop issue, there is one solution: the unification of Ireland.

I know the DUP won’t support that, of course, but I don’t want that reactionary party deciding Britain’s future, as Theresa May is prepared to do since she can’t get enough of her own party to allow Brexit to destroy our economy.

Better still, call off Brexit.
David Reed

I find it extremely disturbing that some MPs are proposing to ignore the democratic will of 17.4 million people. They do not have the right to decide that we, the voters, are wrong.
John Madden

Prince Philip is not above the law

Further to Prince Philip not wearing a seatbelt, why should it be one rule for him and another for joe public?

I recently had breast cancer surgery and was in great discomfort. On driving to go to my radiotherapy I dared to leave my seatbelt off.

I was pulled over and though I explained my situation, and the policeman was charming, a week later I received my fine and an instruction to attend traffic school. A procedure that costs money — and was the most boring four hours of my life.

I’d like to know why, when Prince Philip has been photographed without his seatbelt, he got a mere phone call with words of advice from the police regarding his offence? Why would that be considered fair? Surely the law is the law?
Siobhan Cartwright

Animals deserve better than circus

Regarding the 43rd Monte Carlo International Circus Festival [“Gold clown: acts battle for circus award”, January 18], I sincerely hope no animal act wins. Contorting animals into postures that have no part in their natural lives should itself have no part in human entertainment, especially animals as intelligent and majestic as elephants.

Even anthropomorphically, the expression and posture of one of the elephants in the photograph looked like someone serious and dignified being humiliated in the name of frivolity. Presumably they did not go on to a “rematch”, with the elephants standing on the men’s heads.
Charles E L Gilman

There’s no place today for such treatment of animals, as seen at the Monte Carlo circus festival.
Sasha Corcashvili