The government wants tougher sentences for attacks on statues than on women: its culture war gets ever more absurd
Such a strong look for the government’s police, crime, sentencing and courts bill to allow for longer sentences for attacking statues than are handed down for attacking women. What if the victim of crime is one of those living statues who busk in public spaces – a Queen Victoria, say, or a Statue of Liberty? Do you prosecute the defendant as though he’s merely harmed a woman, or do you go for the fullest force of law and treat him as if he has defaced an inanimate object?
Doesn’t have to be a female living statue, of course. There’s sometimes a living statue of Winston Churchill outside Covent Garden tube station. If a load of drunks set upon him – and living statues are constantly set upon, by their own accounts – do you close the investigation within about six hours owing to lack of resources? Or do you act as though someone has scrawled “is a racist” on a pedestal beneath 12 foot of insensate bronze, and push for 10 years in jail for a crime so supposedly emotive the perpetrator will be begging to be transferred to solitary after he’s endured three days of HMP Frankland’s welcoming party?
