Wilderness beckons

THE response by Tony Blair (Yorkshire Post, September 3) to the call from Desmond Tutu that Blair should appear before the International Criminal Court in The Hague for his role in the Iraq war beggars belief.

The glib comment by Blair that he was on the same side as Tutu on the issue of apartheid in South Africa is offensive and shameful.

Desmond Tutu has played a courageous and historic role in the fight against apartheid in South Africa and has been a distinguished ambassador for peace and equality across the world.

It is time for Blair to refrain from spouting his wisdom and sermons and retire into the political wilderness with as much dignity as he is able to muster.

Soft sentencing from judges

From: Peter Hyde, Kendale View, Driffield.

ONE begins to wonder what planet Judge Bowers lives on. To commend a burglar for bravery and not send him to prison raises the question of his fitness to hold that post (Yorkshire Post, September 7).

I wonder if he would hold the same view if his house was burgled. Soft judges and soft sentences in soft jails make crime a soft option to work.

As a very young PC, I locked a burglar up and because he was qualified by age and previous offending he went to prison for 10 years’ preventative detention. Many years later, as a solicitors’ clerk, a man with the same background in crime was sentenced to two-and-a-half years. Burglary was much rarer then and crime did not generally pay.