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MOTHER'S NOT RESPONSIBLE
Stephen Young, aged 12, suffered a serious brain injury after falling through a school skylight and launched a legal battle for compensation. His mother claimed Kent council failed to ensure his safety despite the fact he was trespassing. When did his mother relinquish responsibility for her 12-year-old?

OUT OF TOUCH
The Queen met three world-famous guitarists and asked, “What do you do?” When rock legend Eric Clapton, known as God to his fans, introduced himself she added, “Have you been playing a long time?” The star replied, “It must be 45 years now.” The Queen met Clapton, 59, with Led Zeppelin genius Jimmy Page, 61, and guitar wizard Jeff Beck, 60, who all played in The Yardbirds. She asked bemused Page, who co-wrote Stairway To Heaven, one of the greatest rock numbers of all time, “Are you a guitarist, too?” Clapton chirped up, “And we’re all from Surrey.” Her Majesty chatted to stars at a Buckingham Palace do to celebrate the music industry.

JUST ANOTHER RIP-OFF
Apple charges customers in the UK 79p to download tracks from its iTunes website, yet music fans in France and Germany pay just 65p. And over the 'pond' in the USA, it's even cheaper at 54p. Apple said that each of their stores was 'country specific' and insisted it was 'normal' to be prevented from buying from iTunes elsewhere.

But Andy Evans, managing director of ITportal.com said there was no good reason for the price difference. He said, "There are no overhead costs, no CD's to produce and no packaging. The internet is supposed to to have created a level playing field but it has not."

An Apple spokesman said, "The underlying economic model in each country has an impact on how we price our track downloads. That's not unusual, look at the price of CD's in the US versus the UK." Yes, a rip-off, and Apple believes it can get away with it.

But after 100MILLION tunes were downloaded from Apple's iTunes UK website at 79p a go, there's no chance of the price being reduced!

REAL JUSTICE
Pensioner Joyce Edwards found a burglar with his testicles impaled on glass from a window he smashed breaking in and when he screamed in agony that he was dying she snapped back, `GOOD.`

Joyce had been woken by a crashing sound from her bathroom. She went to investigate and saw the raider dangling on shards of glass in his groin. The thief slipped after trapping his head while opening the small top window of the bathroom at the couple’s bungalow.

His feet crashed though the large frosted window. Joyce alerted neighbours who dialled 999. One rescuer said the raider lost up to four pints of blood. He was treated in hospital but medics refused to say whether he had lost either of his testicles. A man was later arrested and charged, even though he had already received a bollocking!

ENOUGH TO MAKE YOU SICK
A senior Crown Court judge who was arrested over child pornography allegations is to retire early on grounds of ill health. David Selwood, who is the resident judge at Portsmouth Crown Court, was arrested as part of a national paedophile investigation. He was interviewed by detectives over allegations of possessing indecent images of children and was released on police bail pending further inquiries.

A spokesman for the Department of Constitutional Affairs said that Judge Selwood would be entitled to a full pension. The spokesman said that he was due to retire when he reached the age of 70 but was retiring early because of ill health. "The judge is innocent until proved guilty and therefore, like any other person, is entitled to his full pension upon retirement", the spokesman said.

Presumably, his retirement will not effect police investigations in any way, but the question should be asked, would he have decided to retire due to such ill health had he not been arrested and placed under investigation?

David Selwood was accused of using his legal knowledge to ENSURE he gets the lowest possible sentence and looked set to avoid jail. He pleaded guilty to 12 counts of making indecent photos and one of possessing an indecent image. But an expert said that Selwood knew he would get off lightly, because the nude and semi-nude snaps of boys aged eight to 14 did not show sex acts.

Sentencing guidelines to judges put such pictures at the lowest end of the punishment scale. Bob McLachlan, ex-head of Scotland Yard’s paedophile unit said, “It’s a get out of jail card. He knows the tariff sentencing system better than anybody. He is clever enough to know that downloading images of children not engaged in sex is highly unlikely to end in a prison sentence. But it doesn’t mean his sexual interest in children is any less.”

Selwood had told police that he only visited internet sex sites out of curiosity and that he was not a paedophile and visited porn websites only out of curiosity. But he confessed it would be difficult to justify his actions as research. Yet two months previously he refused to jail child-abuse expert Prof Christopher Bagley, ruling the former Southampton University academic had downloaded child porn for a research project.

His lawyer said, "He has lost his judicial career and his reputation." But he didn't have a career - he retired, remember? David Selwood was later sentenced to a 12 months community rehabilitation order after insisting he had accessed child abuse websites out of 'curiosity'. But, because of ill-health, he will be excused carrying out any service.

Just 24 hours after judge David Selwood avoided prison, Eton College master Ian McAuslan also avoided jail even though he admitted possessing over 2,000 images of children, 200 of them described as indecent. Magistrates imposed a sentence of only nine months, suspended for two years.

The judge did not even make an order forbidding McAuslan from working with children. It certainly pays to know the right people and confirms yet again that there's one law for them, and another law for the rest of us.

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