Daily Mail
July 16, 2014
This is going to be one of those columns which begins: Is it me? A judge has ruled that an American drugs dealer can’t be deported from Britain because he has a ‘human right’ to free medical treatment on the NHS.
Vietnam war veteran Johnny Callie was jailed for seven years in 2007 for conspiracy to supply crack cocaine and heroin to addicts in Ipswich.
We are also told, without any evidence whatsoever, that the gang of which he was the kingpin would ‘almost certainly have supplied drugs to the five prostitutes (sorry, “sex workers”) murdered in Ipswich by Suffolk Strangler Steve Wright’.
As if that’s got anything to do with the price of crack. Regular readers may remember that when these desperate women were killed, the BBC declared an official month of mourning. We were all to blame.
Naturally, having been given seven years, Callie was released after three. Of course he was. Don’t want him becoming ‘institutionalised’, mixing with evil phone-hackers and bent MPs, perish the thought.
Callie suffers from diabetes, high blood pressure and ‘degenerative changes to his right knee’. He has now argued successfully that he would not be able to afford medical care in the U.S.
And, apparently, his girlfriend is depressed. Did I mention that?
According to Judge Bernard Dawson (I’ll get on to him in a minute): ‘Due to her depression and anxiety, she is usually dependent upon the claimant and cannot easily leave her home on her own or travel outside Ipswich unless he is with her.
‘She would experience high levels of anxiety were she to leave her home and travel to America with the claimant. She has a history of attempted suicide.’
Oh dear, how sad, never mind.
Sounds like a case for the Punk Samaritans. Ring them up claiming you’re feeling suicidal and they’ll tell you how to do it.
But this cynical, pathetic sob-story touched the heart of Judge Bernie the Bolthole, who halted the deportation order on the grounds it breached Callie’s right to ‘family life’ under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. What family?
And as for not being able to afford health insurance in the U.S., hasn’t Bernie heard of Obamacare?
Callie’s case was bolstered by a supportive letter from the Norfolk and Suffolk Probation Trust.
There’s a surprise. The Guardianistas who run the probation service would consider Callie a valued ‘client’. The interests of the wider public are never taken into consideration.
Don’t expect the judiciary to stick up for common decency, either. Judges regularly take decisions that spit in the face of those of us with ‘conventional’ values.
In the interests of justice, I checked out Bernie the Bolthole — so that you don’t have to. He’s a dead-ringer for John Major, grey-haired, bespectacled, boring. Looks like a middle-ranking proctologist. Oh, yes.
On closer examination, though, there’s something not quite right about him. He’s pictured on Mail Online wearing a pinstriped suit, with a check shirt and a patterned tie. Not a way for a gentleman to dress, I’m afraid.
Turns out he’s got previous when it comes to yuman rites.