Liberal Sentences?

Now I admit I was among the first to cheer when anti-Coalition cabinet member Chris Huhne 'resigned' from his post as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. The man is a buffoon. His barking views have too long plagued the Coalition as this moron continually briefed against his own cabinet.

Perhaps his actions have been attempts at Liberal point scoring seeing as his party now languish in the single digits in terms of popularity, or maybe early movements to depose Nick Clegg after the nigh on inevitable 2015 election disaster.

Either way, he's gone. Which is great. But something about this schadenfreude feels wrong. As much as I'd like to see Chris Huhne gone from politics on a fairly permanent basis (he will certainly almost lose Eastleigh, but will inevitably pop up in a Lib Dem 'safe seat' if such a thing exists), I cannot abide by the potential sentence both he and his estranged wife, Vicky Price face. For colluding in the evil deception that is pretending someone else was doing the speeding, they could face life in prison.

I'm sure I don't need to go into any depth on my views on speed cameras. Suffice to say I'm not a fan and think the insistence on their mass installation is more to do with revenue than road safety. It's lazy statistic and money driven policing. However, I think we must have something wrong when shifting 3 penalty points onto someone else can attract the same penalty as murder.

Now don't get a hard-on over this. I'm not saying it's not breaking the law. It is. But we have a proportional judicial system whereby we measure how bad each crime is and attribute to that crime a punishment in proportion. I feel the 'Eastleigh 3 point shuffle' is pretty low down that scale.

At the other end of the scale is planning to blow up the London Stock Exchange with its concomitant structural damage, economic damage and most importantly, mass murder. You probably agree. Yet Huhne might go to prison for life (of course he won't, but that's where the parameters are set) for getting his then-wife to take 3 points and the radical extremists (take that pleonasm, PC BBC) who plotted to kill half of London will likely be back out on the streets (no doubt totally rehabilitated because there's no religious extremism in prison) in little over 6 years.

Is it just me or have we got this slightly back to front? There's definitely something wrong with that sentence...