OT that nice Stephen Yaxley-Lennon..... | Vital Football

OT that nice Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.....

MadAmster

MadAmster

Vital Squad Member
..... seems to have a lot of friends sticking up for him on FB. Just a shame they don't understand the Law.

Why shouldn't he report on cases linked to other ongoing cases just because the judge put reporting restrictions on it?

Free country innit?

To an extent yes but you still have to obey the Law.

They don't seem to understand that there are linked cases going on and that ant reporting of the names of the accused and/or those already found guilty in previous related cases might prejudice a fair trial. The judge(s) in those other trials could record a mistrial. He/They would then order a retrial, meaning the poor abused girls would have to go through the ordeal yet again at a later date OR and even worse, the judge could decide there is no way the accused can now get a fair trial and simply set them free.......

Mr Lennon's friends also say he was stitched up. He pleaded GUILTY!! Great stitch up that.
 
Roger Ramjet said:
I must be missing something here
Click to expand...

Yaxley-Lennon aka Tommy Robinson, former head of the English Defence League was given a suspended sentence last year for making a video in which he made comments about the accused that were deemed to be in breach of reporting restrictions. When handing down the suspended sentence, the judge told him in no uncertain terms that a repeat elsewhere would see the 3 months jail kick in on top of any sentence handed down for the repeat offence.

Last week he was outside the court where sentences were about to be handed out to a group of men involved in one of the large "grooming gang" cases. Reporting restrictions were still in place as the trial had connections to other, still ongoing trials in other courts. He was originally arrested for breach of the peace. In court (same day) he was actually charged with Contempt of Court. He plead guilty and was given a 10 month sentence plus the 3 months still hanging over his head from last year's Contempt case.

From my point of view, he broke the Law and should pay the price. To balance that you should take into account the fact that he was in court about 3 hours after his arrest. That is damned quick. Was he stitched up or did he make it easy for others who disagree with his thoughts and actions? Whatever, he plead guilty.

His supporters point to the fact that the guilty verdicts were already in so he couldn't influence the trial. They forget that there are ongoing cases, likely to involve some of the accused in this case, that could be influenced by his racial rantings. They seem to forget that the judge in one of those other trials could decide prejudice had occurred and order either a) a retrial in which case the victims would have to go through their whole ordeal yet again or b) he could decide that there was no way the accused could get a fair trial and simply set them free. Neither of those outcomes would be beneficial to the victims.

Is he right to focus on one grooming trial and not others? IMO no. He only focuses on those featuring Pakistani suspects. He ignores cases like that of the 5 or 6 white English born accused found guilty of raping babies last week. Stats show 84% of members of grooming gangs are Pakistani. That does point to there possibly being ethnic reasoning behind these awful actions. However, when you look at rape and sexual assault cases in total, 90% of the perpetrators, grooming related or not, are white. This could lead many people to believe that Robinson's actions are purely racially motivated......

There are reports, as yet unverified, that the judge who sent him down only glanced at a small part of the video Robinson had shot and that this proves lack of care in the decision making which led to his imprisonment. If so, there is cause for appeal.

It's a case full of twists and turns that will run for a few weeks more and possibly even longer.......
 
Very balanced ‘Amster. At the end of the day, imo, he’s a thug of the extreme right wing variety with a string of convictions for various forms of assault. Quite happy for bad things to happen to him, but I suppose the State must appear even handed or there’ll be even more Neanderthals taking to the streets of Leeds and elsewhere.
 
ramAnag said:
Very balanced ‘Amster. At the end of the day, imo, he’s a thug of the extreme right wing variety with a string of convictions for various forms of assault. Quite happy for bad things to happen to him, but I suppose the State must appear even handed or there’ll be even more Neanderthals taking to the streets of Leeds and elsewhere.
Click to expand...

Thanks rA. I try to be. It does sometimes backfire though. A few weeks back some one posted up a video take in a kids' playground. There were 4 kids at the top of a slide They weren't black but from the grainy video it was hard to tell what their background was. A little black boy tried to joing them. They wouldn't let him. The boy and his mother then moved to another toy on the site, one of those animal figures mounted on a spring so you can rock back and forth. The 4 kids came and harrassed the boy again and one hit him. The boy and the mother left the playground. There were many other adults about and they did nothing to intervene. The commentator said the kids called the little boy a monkey. We have to take his word for that as I didn't recognise the language. He said the kids were racist and that it is a shame when kids as young a 4 or 5 have been taught to be racist. Many posters on the article were extremely angry and calling the 4 kids racist.

Enter Mr Sensible, stage right. I pointed out that none of the posters knew for definite that the boy had been called a monkey. We only had the original posters word for that. I went on to say that it wasn't necessarily a racist event that we witnessed on the video. I argued that we don't see what happened in the minutes leading up to the incident (which was, IMO, cruel, bullying and just wrong) and there might be mitigating circumstances if we had seen that footage. The boy might have a history with the 4, being not nice to them individually or together and that was why the 4 didn't want to play with him. Without knowledge of any back story you can't reasonably conclude that the 4 were racist.

These, what I thought to be reasonable, thoughts led to 15 to 20 people labelling me a racist, one looked at my profile and decided that as I was an ex teacher I should be ashamed and she was really glad I hadn't taught her children.

My retort was that if the video had contained adults rather than kids and those having a go at me were one of the 4 and they were arrested for racially inspired assault would they want the court to hear any back story or would they be happy to be convicted and sent down on the strength of the video............ as none of them answered that point and I saw no more posts accusing me of being racist, that they saw the light in my argument.

Here, we have the biggest negative with regard to social media. There are too many people out there without the necessary intelligence to fairly interpret what they saw taking into account the wider picture. They also lack the intellect to understand why others both see and understand that wider picture.
 
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