Can someone shed more light on the case of the Newcastle horsepuncher?
I am notoriously liberal on penal matters but found the one-year jail sentence a wholly excessive punishment, an example of what I have taken to calling tabloid justice.
It doesn’t mean I have any real sympathy for this unlikeable character. Nor would I if the circumstances been reversed and he was a Mackem laying into the horse.
But leaving aside the risk it could have ended in a more serious incident, we have here a drunken lowlife who punches but does not hurt a police horse. If he deserves a year, the cretins who beat up the Bigg Market will presumably be going inside for life.